Abstract
Teachers’ personal values drive their goals and behaviors at school. Moreover, values can support subjective well-being and an individual sense of self-efficacy. Teachers’ self-efficacy, namely teachers’ beliefs in their ability to effectively handle the tasks, obligations, and challenges related to their professional activity, plays a key role in influencing important academic outcomes (e.g., students’ achievement and motivation) and well-being in the working environment. Based on Schwartz’s well-known theory of human values, this study sought to examine the relations between teachers’ values (i.e., conservation, openness to change, self-transcendence, and self-enhancement) and their self-efficacy. In particular, it aimed at analyzing the extent to which these relations are moderated by teachers’ controlled and autonomous motivations for teaching. Two hundred and twenty-seven Italian high school teachers (73.6% females; M = 44.77 years, SD = 10.56) were involved in the study and asked to complete a self-report questionnaire. Results showed that teachers’ conservation values were positively associated to sense of self-efficacy regardless of the type and level of motivation for teaching. More interestingly, the relationships between openness to change and self-efficacy on the one hand, and self-transcendence and self-efficacy on the other, varied depending on teachers’ motivations. These relations were stronger when teachers perceived less external pressure and felt to be self-determined toward teaching. Implications of these results for teachers’ practices and well-being in their work environment and further developments of the study are discussed.
Highlights
Teachers’ self-efficacy has progressively gained an important role in school psychology research as a result of its implications for teaching effectiveness, instructional practices, and for students’ academic achievement (Klassen et al, 2009; Klassen and Tze, 2014)
They scored higher on autonomous motivations for teaching than on controlled motivations, t(225) = 25.22, p < 0.001, and on average they reported a high level of self-efficacy
Teachers’ self-efficacy has been repeatedly demonstrated to be a relevant factor for the effectiveness of the teaching activity, as it is a powerful drive influencing the behavior of teachers in the classroom and the effort put in the endeavor (Klassen et al, 2009; Klassen and Tze, 2014)
Summary
Teachers’ self-efficacy has progressively gained an important role in school psychology research as a result of its implications for teaching effectiveness, instructional practices, and for students’ academic achievement (Klassen et al, 2009; Klassen and Tze, 2014). Schwartz (1992, 2012) identified ten basic value types: power (social status, dominance over people and resources), achievement (personal success according to social standards), hedonism (pleasure or sensuous gratification), stimulation (excitement, challenge, and novelty), self-direction (independence of thought and action), benevolence (preserving and enhancing the welfare of people to whom one is close), universalism (understanding, tolerance, and concern for the welfare of all people and nature), tradition (respect and commitment to cultural or religious customs and ideas), conformity (restraint of actions and impulses that may harm others or violate social expectations), and security (safety and stability of society, relationships, and self). As typically shown by studies dealing with the person-situation controversy, the stronger the perceived situational pressure to hold a value or to act in a particular way, the weaker should be the importance of stable individual differences such as personal values (e.g., Bardi and Schwartz, 2003; Barni et al, 2016; Danioni and Barni, 2017)
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