Effects of primary teachers' perceptions associated with individualist/collectivist organisation structure and power distance on self-efficiency beliefs

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of classroom teachers' individual-collectivistic perceptions and power distance perceptions on their levels of self-efficiency. The sample group comprises 3671 acting classroom teachers from central districts of İzmir (Karşıyaka, Konak, Gaziemir, Balçova, Narlıdere, Güzelbahçe, Bayraklı and Karabağlar). In the present study, in order to determine the self- efficiency of the teachers, the "Self efficiency Scale" developed by Tschannen Moran and Woolfolk Hoy was used; to determine their individualistic and collectivistic perceptions, the "Organisational Collectivism and Individualism Scale" validated by Erdil and Wasti (2002) was used; and to determine their power distance perceptions, the "Power Distance Scale" developed by Dorfman and Howel (1988) and adapted to Turkish by Akyol (2009) was used. The data gathering tools were circulated to the teachers by hand by the researcher himself (herself) and the scales were applied after all the necessary explanations about the study had been given. The data gathered were analysed by using the SPSS 20 programme. In the present study, through the analysis of the data, mean, standard deviation, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Regression analysis were used. In the present study, it was observed that the classroom teachers thought that they had more self- efficiency than mean scores about their self- efficiency of involving students in the learning process, their self- efficiency of teaching strategies and their self- efficiency of classroom management. The study reveals that classroom teachers' collectivistic perceptions are higher than their individualistic perceptions. Their perceptions about power distance are lower than the mean score. The study also reveals that classroom teachers' perceptions of self- efficiency about students' involvement, teaching strategies and classroom management have a positive and statistically meaningful effect and that there is a positive relationship between their self- efficiency beliefs and their perceptions of individualism-collectivism and power distance.