Teacher Self-Efficacy and Play Support for Preschoolers: A Cross-Level Interaction with the Work Environment

Teacher self-efficacy and self-reported cognitive activation and classroom management: A multilevel perspective on the role of school characteristics

School leadership causes various psychological outcomes on both teachers and students. In school management, school principals’ exhibiting leadership behaviors from different perspectives can be considered as the basis of more effective management. At the same time, different leadership orientations can more accurately guide the reflections of the complexity of human nature in the work environment. This study uses Job Demand-Resource and Social Exchange Theory to investigate the mediating role of teacher autonomy in the relationship between four-frame leadership orientations and teacher self-efficacy. The research sample comprises 498 teachers employed in public schools. All leadership orientations were found to have positive, moderate and significant relationships with teacher self-efficacy and autonomy. The mediation of teacher autonomy was analyzed with structural equation modeling. As a result of the research, structural, human resources and symbolic leadership orientations positively predicted teacher self-efficacy. In addition, teacher autonomy had partial and full mediation effects on teacher self-efficacy. Implications for future research and practical implementation are discussed.

The high-quality development of rural education is an important goal of China's education development, and is also an important measure to eliminate the gap between urban and rural educational resources and to promote educational equity. Rural teachers are considered to be the key factor affecting the quality of rural education, and the creative self-efficacy (CSE) of rural teachers in the early stage of their career development plays an important role in the transformation of these teachers into excellent teachers. According to self-efficacy theory, social support theory and self-determination theory, the career ideals and working environment of rural novice teachers should have a positive effect on the improvement of their CSE and comprehensive quality, but this relationship still needs to be verified. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the consistency between the career ideals and the working environment of rural novice teachers on their sense of CSE. In this study, 580 novice rural teachers in South China who had been in the classroom for 1-5 years were surveyed by purposive sampling using the Teacher Career Ideal scale, the Work Environment scale, the Creative self-efficacy scale and other tools. The results showed that the career ideal of rural novice teachers was positively correlated with their sense of CSE. There was a significant positive correlation between working environment and the CSE of rural novice teachers, while consistency between career ideal and working environment had a significant impact on their sense of CSE.

The quality of teaching is significantly influenced by teachers’ self-efficacy. Grounded in social cognitive theory, this study examined the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy for teaching, on the one hand, and individual factors, working conditions, and principal leadership, on the other. Data derived from 466 primary teachers were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching was positively associated with their teaching experience, beliefs in self-directed learning, and support from colleagues. These findings underscored the importance of teachers’ characteristics and collegial support in explaining teachers’ self-efficacy, highlighting the need for fostering a supportive and collaborative work environment in schools.

IntroductionThis study examines the relationship between principal instructional leadership and teacher self-efficacy in student engagement and classroom management within Chinese primary and secondary schools. Grounded in Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, it addresses two research questions: (1) What is the association between principal instructional leadership and teacher self-efficacy? (2) Which specific leadership dimensions most significantly predict teacher efficacy?MethodsA quantitative research design was employed, with data collected from 459 teachers through two validated online instruments: the Educational Leadership Instrument (ELI) and the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES). Data analysis included descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple regression.ResultsResults demonstrated significant positive correlations between instructional leadership and teacher self-efficacy (r = 0.75–0.84, p < 0.01). Regression analysis identified “work environment support” (β = 0.488) and “teacher-student engagement promotion” (β = 0.518) as the strongest predictive dimensions of teacher efficacy.DiscussionThe findings underscore the pivotal role of instructional leadership in enhancing teachers’ confidence in student engagement and classroom management. This study contributes to leadership literature by highlighting culturally relevant dimensions in non-Western educational contexts, while offering practical implications for principal training programs and professional development initiatives.

This study utilized an explanatory sequential research design to explore the relationship between school heads’ supervisory skills and public school teachers’ self-efficacy in one of the districts in Laguna, Philippines. It investigated how the supervision skills of school administrators impact teachers’ self-efficacy using adopted survey questionnaires. The study utilized a non-probability quota sampling with a total respondent of 141 teachers while data were analyzed using Spearman rank rho. On the other hand, eight teachers were interviewed to explain the quantitative results. The study’s findings revealed that feedback provision had no significant relationship with teacher self-efficacy. However, several variables, such as instructional leadership, communication, support mechanisms, and fostering a positive work environment, were positively correlated with self-efficacy. These results highlighted the importance of effective leadership practices in enhancing teacher self-efficacy, which may uplift the country’s education quality. While this study provides valuable insights into the relationship between school heads’ supervisory skills and teacher self-efficacy, its findings may be limited in generalizability due to the specific context of the district. Thus, further research is needed to enhance the generalizability and robustness of the findings. It is recommended to increase the sample size by including more teachers from diverse regions, making the findings more applicable to a broader range of educational contexts.

The student achievement is the direct outcome of the effort expended by the teachers in the classroom. To get the teachers engaged in the classroom efficiently and diligently it is very necessary to provide them with a conducive and favorable working environment in school for which only the head teachers is capable and responsible to achieve the highest level of success. Teachers’ self-efficacy is affected directly by the head teachers’ leadership practices. This study was designed to explore the correlation between head teachers’ leadership practices and teachers’ self-efficacy. Correlation research design was used to conduct this study by applying survey method. The population of the study was consisted of secondary schools teachers. A sample of two hundred students was selected by conveniently sampling technique. Researchers collected data by self-developed questionnaire on five point likert scale related to leadership practices and teachers’ self-efficacy. There was significant positive moderate relationship between leadership practices and teachers self-efficacy. Both male and female teachers’ had same perceptions about leadership practices and self-efficacy at secondary level. Head teachers may motivate and entice teachers positively to increase the level of teacher efficacy. Basic facilities may provide to the teachers to improve their self-efficacy. Keywords: Heads’ leadership practices, teachers’ self-efficacy, motivation, and facilities DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-16-07 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Although the global COVID-19 pandemic has drawn public attention to the ecology of teachers’ work, little is known about how external and internal factors interact and affect early childhood teachers’ job satisfaction and self-efficacy. The purpose of this study is to examine how the external ecology of kindergartens and individual personality traits affect the job satisfaction and self-efficacy of in-service early childhood teachers in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era through a self-reporting questionnaire distributed among 237 kindergarten teachers in online and offline learning community groups. It was found that the job satisfaction of early childhood teachers was a significant predictor of self-efficacy and played a partially mediating role between personality traits and self-efficacy. Furthermore, personality traits are considered significant predictors of job satisfaction and self-efficacy in Chinese early childhood teachers, and it was noted that these teachers were the least satisfied in terms of pay and promotion. With these findings, this study contributes to the job satisfaction and self-efficacy literature by validating their causal associations in the field of early childhood teachers. Our findings also provide guidelines for practitioners and policymakers in promoting early childhood teacher credentialing and external social support to enhance job satisfaction and self-efficacy. The unique value of this study lies in the clarification of how the work environment and ecology of early childhood teachers in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era influenced self-efficacy and of personality traits being the underlying attributions that led to this result.

This study examines the relationships between components of organizational safety climate, including employee attitudes to organizational safety issues; perceptions of the physical working environment, and evaluations of worker engagement with safety issues; and relates these to self-reported levels of safety behavior. It attempts to explore the relationships between these variables in 1189 workers across 78 work groups in a large transportation organization. Evaluations of safety climate, the working environment and worker engagement, as well as safe behaviors, were collected using a self report questionnaire. The multilevel analysis showed that both levels of evaluation (the work group and the individual), and some cross-level interactions, were significant in explaining safe behaviors. Analyses revealed that a number of variables, at both levels, were associated with worker engagement and safe behaviors. The results suggest that, while individual evaluations of safety issues are important, there is also a role for the fostering of collective safety climates in encouraging safe behaviors and therefore reducing accidents.

This research explores the role of self- efficacy as a mediator in the influence between work commitment, Total Quality Management (TQM), and teacher performance. The survey method was used to collect data based on purposive sampling from 55 teachers from 3 junior high schools in Ponorogo Regency. Data collection was carried out using a questionnaire consisting of a Likert scale with 5 alternative answers. PLS-SEM analysis was used to analyze the data and test the model context. The results of the analysis show that work commitment has a significant effect on teacher self-efficacy and performance. Furthermore, self-efficacy was proven not to mediate the influence between work commitment and Total Quality Management on teacher performance. These findings highlight the importance of self-efficacy in facilitating the development of teacher performance through work commitment and the implementation of total quality management. The practical implication of this research is the importance of creating a work environment that supports the development of teacher self-efficacy. Educational institutions can provide social support, recognition of teacher contributions, and opportunities to participate in professional development activities. By creating a conducive environment to strengthen teacher self-efficacy, work commitment, and TQM implementation are hoped to run more effectively.

Much research has been conducted to investigate the impact of work environment on academics’ job satisfaction. However, little is known about what contributes to academics’ job dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are two distinct entities because a lack of job satisfaction cannot be simply equated with job dissatisfaction. This research investigated the mediating role of academic self-efficacy in the relationship between perceived work environment and job dissatisfaction. Participants were 547 academics from the 8 University Grants Committee-funded higher educational institutions in Hong Kong. Results show that academics’ perceptions of their work environment (including their perceptions of institutional expectations regarding research, university governance and management, and working conditions) statistically predicted job dissatisfaction both directly and indirectly through academic self-efficacy in research and teaching, irrespective of age, gender, academic rank, institutional ranking, and primary academic discipline. The findings enrich the literature concerning perceived work environment, academic self-efficacy, and job dissatisfaction. At the same time, they establish a meaningful link among the fields of psychology, higher education, and career development and have practical implications for academics and university senior managers and, most likely, for senior leaders in other occupations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

The study examined the correlation between work self-efficacy and job performance of business educators in public universities. A correlational design was adopted and data were collected from a randomly selected sample of 142 business educators (12 HODs and 130 lecturers) using a structured psychological scale. Data where analyzed using Pearson correlation matrix and linear regression. Pearson correlation matrix was employed to answer the research question while linear regression was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed a significant but low correlation between work self-efficacy and task performance (r = .263; p = .002). The result also showed a significant but low correlation between work self-efficacy and contextual performance (r = .238; p = .007). The results also showed a significant but low correlation between work self-efficacy and overall job performance (r = .315; p = .000). These findings suggest that if university administrators and managers create or implement a challenging and resourceful work environment, it will help increase and sustain high level of work self-efficacy among business educators in public universities which, in turn, further increase their task performance and contextual performance.

Celem artykułu jest empiryczna weryfikacja poczucia własnej skuteczności wśród nauczycieli edukacji wczesnoszkolnej. Przeprowadzono badania metodą sondażu diagnostycznego wśród 44 nauczycieli klas początkowych. Zastosowano kwestionariusz Teacher’s Self Efficacy (TSE) Alberta Bandury w tłumaczeniu autorki. Wyniki badań wskazują na to, że nauczyciele najwyższą skuteczność osiągają w zakresie umiejętności wychowawczych, a najniższą w kontaktach z rodzicami i umiejętnościach tworzenia bezpiecznej, stymulującej atmosfery pracy w relacjach z uczniami, innymi nauczycielami i pracownikami szkoły. Ustalono, że nauczyciele będący w fazie zdobywania kolejnych stopni awansu zawodowego prezentują wyższe poczucie własnej skuteczności niż nauczyciele, którzy osiągnęli status nauczyciela dyplomowanego.

This study examined the contributions of organizational level norms about work requirements and social relations, and work-family conflict, to job stress and subjective health symptoms, controlling for Karasek's job demand-control-support model of the psychosocial work environment, in a sample of 1,346 employees from 56 firms in the Norwegian food and beverage industry. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed that organizational norms governing work performance and social relations, and work-to-family and family-to-work conflict, explained significant amounts of variance for job stress. The cross-level interaction between work performance norms and work-to-family conflict was also significantly related to job stress. Work-to-family conflict was significantly related to health symptoms, but family-to-work conflict and organizational norms were not.

This study examined the association between child welfare workers’ safety concerns and organizational commitment, with specific attention to the possible cross-level interaction effect of leader-member exchange (LMX) on the relationship between workers’ safety concerns (organizational level) and organizational commitment (individual level). Results suggested that frequent exposure to unsafe working environments were associated with lower levels of organizational commitment. Cross-level interaction of LMX was found, which indicates that as the quality of leader-member exchange improves, the negative relationship between unsafe climate and organizational commitment decreases. The importance of workplace safety and its relevance for administrative practice are discussed.