Teachers’ Self-Concept and Its Benefits for Science Education

Abstract

Self-concept, understood as an impression or idea one has about oneself, represents a significant precondition for the professional improvement of teachers, as well as for the advancement of teaching itself and students’ development of their own positive self-concept. This research aimed to examine the idea of self-concept with the purpose of determining the manner in which primary and secondary school teachers perceive themselves. The factors to be analyzed in relation to the variables, work experience and pay satisfaction, were defined by means of the scale of estimates and factor analysis. The obtained results showed that accepting oneself, self-improvement, self-satisfaction and job satisfaction, as well as the initiative and openness to change varied depending on work experience and pay satisfaction. Work experience, not pay satisfaction, proved to have an impact on the teachers’ perception of the relationship with their colleagues, whereas the perception of personal and teaching qualities did not depend on the aforementioned variables.

A Discourse on Teachers' Self-Concept Affecting Their Perceived Ease of ICT Use

“…Moreover, self-concept is conditioned by teachers' competence (Maksimovic & Osmanovic, 2019). Teachers who feel competent enough and prepared to improve their communication and teachingskillscommunicatebetterwiththeirstudentsandhaveanoverallbetterunderstandingof theirownselves,i.e.theycreateapositiveself-concept (Mishra,2013).Theabovediscoursesuggests thatTSCisavitalfactorforeffectiveteaching.ComputerandICTrelatedself-concepthasalready beenstudiedextensively (Jannecketal.2013;Kunduetal.2022b).Langheinrichetal.…”

Analysis of the relationship between mathematics teacher candidates’ reflective thinking levels and their philosophical views on the nature of mathematics

“…Therefore, teachers always need to reflect on their teaching applications. The effectiveness of a teacher in the classroom is closely associated with the reflective thinking skills of that teacher on his/her teaching activities (Maksimović & Osmanović, 2019). Especially, the fact that today's mathematics education aims to bring up individuals who have high-level skills such as producing solutions for the problems encountered, and expressing reasoning in this process, making predictions, making evidence-based inferences, and managing one's own feeling and teaching indicators brings important responsibilities to the teachers as well (Ministry of National Education [MoNE], 2018).…”