Personality and Attitude towards Teaching Profession: Mediating Role of Self Efficacy

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to examine the correlation between the five factor personality traits of pre-service teachers and their attitudes towards the teaching profession and to test the mediating role of the pre-service teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. The study population included pre-service teachers that attended the "pedagogical formation course" instructed / applied in İnönü University, Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences in 2015-2016 academic year. The survey sample included 382 pre-service teachers who voluntarily responded to the measurement instruments utilized in the study. The study data were collected with the "five factor personality scale", "attitudes towards the teaching profession scale" and "teacher self-efficacy scale". The obtained data were analyzed with path analysis of structural equation modeling. In conclusion, it was observed that there was a significant positive correlation between the five factor personality traits of extraversion, conscientiousness, openness and agreeableness and teacher self-efficacy belief, and there was a significant negative correlation between neuroticism personality trait and teacher self-efficacy belief. It was observed that the self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers played a full mediating role between their neuroticism, openness and extraversion personality traits, and the same played a partial mediating role in the correlation between conscientiousness and agreeableness personality traits and the attitude towards the teaching profession. The implementation of a curriculum in pre-service teacher training that would increase the self-efficacy beliefs on teaching would also improve their attitudes towards the profession positively.

Determination of factors influencing pre-service teachers' sense of self-efficacy

“…The findings further reveal that there is no relationship between pre-service teachers' teaching self-efficacy and personality factors, namely neuroticism (N) and extraversion (E) ( Table 5). These findings are contrary to previous findings (Djigic, Stojiljov and Doskovic 2013;Jamil et al 2012;Senler and Sungur-Vural 2013;Ustuna 2017), which reported a significant positive relationship between extraversion and teacher self-efficacy belief. These findings are also in contrast with the findings of other studies (Jamil et al 2012; Tze 2014; Senler and Sungur-Vural 2013; Ustuna 2017), which established a negative association between neuroticism and self-efficacy.…”

“…Few studies that have investigated the relationship between teaching self-efficacy and preservice teachers' personality traits, observed that there was a significant positive relationship between extraversion and teacher self-efficacy beliefs (Djigic, Stojiljov and Doskovic 2013;Jamil, Downer and Pianta 2012;Senler and Sungur-Vural 2013;Ustuna 2017). Conversely, neuroticism was found to be negatively associated with self-efficacy (Jamil et al 2012;Klassen and Tze 2014;Senler and Sungur-Vural 2013;Ustuna 2017).…”

Pre-service Science and Mathematics Teachers’ Teaching Efficacy Beliefs and Attitudes toward Teaching: A Partial Correlation Research

“…Attitudes play a vital role because they can impact teachers' practices. It is also known that attitude is significantly related to efficacy (Çaycı, 2011;Demirtaş et al, 2011;Mahajna, 2014;Üstüner, 2017). Zero-order correlation coefficients showed that gender had relationships with both teacher efficacy beliefs and attitudes toward teaching.…”

“…Results show that participant student teachers have a high level of efficacy beliefs and a medium level of attitude toward teaching. High level of teacher efficacy is a common finding in the literature (Aydin & Woolfolk Hoy, 2005;Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007;Üstüner, 2017).…”

The relationship between the vocational teachers’ personality traits and the work motivation

“…Personality traits influence the choice of role which in turn shape the direction of behaviour (Legkauskas, 2008). It has been determined that personality traits are associated with the carrier related decisions and the self-efficacy (Tomšik & Gatial, 2018;Üstüner, 2017), the involvement with the professional activity (Wang et al, 2006) and the leadership in the school environment (Marshall et al, 2012). Teachers' personality traits are reflected in their satisfaction with the job (Paleksić el al., 2017), their performance at work (Rusbadrol et al, 2015;Pourghaz, Jenaabadi, & Ghaeninejad, 2016), efficiency of learning (Fatemi et al, 2015), subjective wellbeing, and the academic achievement of students (Eryilmaz, 2014).…”