Academic optimism and psychological well-being as predictors of Turkish EFL teachers' sense of self-efficacy

The purpose of this study was to look at the academic optimism and psychological well-being of English language instructors to see if these are predictors of self-efficacy. A quantitative research model was used to achieve this goal. Additionally, a correlational screening model was utilized. The research data was collected through google forms which consisted of three scales including Psychological Well-being, Academic Optimism, and Teacher Self-efficacy Scale and the scales were filled out by 272 EFL teachers working at primary, secondary, and high schools in Hakkari. SPSS and the AMOS were used to examine the data. To assess the relationships between variables, the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was evaluated and it was found that there was a meaningful and positive relationship between the three variables, Multiple Linear Regression was used to examine relevant variables and it was shown that 39.4% of the variability in the teacher self-efficacy variable can be explained by the variables of psychological well-being and academic optimism through linear regression, and path analysis was utilized to ascertain whether academic optimism and psychological well-being were significant predictors of self-efficacy and to discover direct and indirect effects of variables. The results of the path analysis revealed that academic optimism could predict the self-efficacy levels of English teachers, but psychological well-being was not a significant predictor. Moreover, it was found that psychological well-being affects EFL teachers' sense of self-efficacy indirectly through academic optimism, which demonstrates that academic optimism is a full mediator variable. The analysis concerning gender, age, seniority and school type variables by ANOVA and t-tests also revealed that male EFL teachers' levels of PWB, TSE, and AO were significantly higher than females. For the age groups, the only difference detected was in the perception of the positive relationship with others sub-dimension. Participants aged 29 and under had a higher score compared to participants aged 30 and over. Additionally, experience was not found to be a determining factor in this study. The findings showed a statistically significant difference in terms of the type of institution in the scales and sub-dimensions used in the survey. The groups that are the source of the difference were determined by the TUKEY test.