Investigation of teachers' qualities and self-efficacy perceptions in character education

It is very crucial that the teachers are efficient in terms of professional and personal development in order to contribute to character and moral development of students. Within this study, it was aimed to investigate the views of elementary school teachers regarding the qualities teachers should have in character education and their self-efficacy perceptions as a character educator. In this sense, the views of elementary school teachers regarding the qualities teachers should possess and their self-efficacy perceptions as a character educator were analyzed; comparisons in terms of gender, professional seniority and the institution of graduation were made and the views and suggestions of participants were reached regarding character education. The participants of this study, designed as a mixed method research, were 301 elementary school teachers from 23 public school within three different socio-economic levels (low-medium-high) in central towns of Adana (Seyhan, Çukurova, Yüreğir, Sarıçam) determined in an unbiased way. Through the study, with the aim of examining the views of participants concerning the qualities of teachers in character education, The Qualities and Efficacies of Teacher in Character Education Scale (QETCES) was developed and applied to the determined participants through 2014-2015 Education year. Within the qualitative dimension of the study, semi-structured interview forms were used to collect data and interviews were conducted with 15 teachers chosen on a volunteer basis from the schools where QETCES was applied. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis H Test were used for quantitative data while content analysis was used for qualitative data analysis. As a result of the data analysis, it was found that there was significant difference between the importance level elementary school teachers give to teacher qualities in character education and their self-efficacy perceptions regarding these qualities in favor of teachers importance level; and that there was significant difference in favor of women teachers between the teacher importance levels up to gender variable while there were not any significant differences for self-efficacy perceptions. As for professional seniority, there was not found any significant differences between teacher importance levels however in terms of self-efficacy perceptions it was seen that teachers experienced for 1-22 years perceived themselves less efficient than more experienced teachers. According to the institution of graduation variable, it was observed that the teacher importance levels for teacher qualities in character education showed significant differences in favor of graduates of bachelor completion programs in terms of the scores from Classroom Character Education Practices subscale and total scores in QETCES and for the self-efficacy perceptions there were significant differences in favor of graduates of bachelor completion programs and institutes of education in terms of both subscale and total scores. As for qualitative data analysis, it was seen that elementary school teachers indicated the qualities teachers should possess in character education as being conscious, being educated for character education, revealing the differences, being patient, being a role model, being fair and treating students equally, etc... Teachers stating that the teacher, school, family, student, administrative elements, environment and media tools are effective factors mentioned the presence of problems regarding similar factors and made some suggestions concerning these problems. Consequently, it was found out that elementary school teachers give importance to the qualities teacher should possess regarding character education at a high degree and their self-efficacy perceptions are at a high level. That the professional seniority, gender and institution of graduation variables have effects on teachers' views and efficacy perceptions was also observed. Teachers emphasized the necessity of new arrangements within the teacher education and education in general, the significance of school-parent collaboration regarding character education. These results show that there is a need for changes in teacher education, character education should more specifically take place in curriculum and parents' awareness concerning the field should be raised. Keywords: Character education, elementary school teacher, teacher qualities, self-efficacy perception