An investigation into the relationship between teachers' self-efficacy levels and their organizational commitments

Self-efficacy is the self-belief of an individual to be able to accomplish a task successfully, displaying some necessary activities to perform at a certain level. Among the staff conducting educational activities in schools, teachers are important figures who form the basic system of education and training activities. In this sense, the self-efficacy levels of teachers are of great importance for effective educational environment. Organizational commitment, on the other hand, can be defined as the set of internalized normative connections employed to achieve the organizational objectives. At this precise point, it can be noted that the organizational commitments of teachers impact their teaching performance in schools. The core purpose of this study is to investigate into the relationship between teachers' self-efficacy levels and their organizational commitments. This study is quantitave one in nature and adopted the relational screening research design. Since there was no difficulty in reaching to the population in general, any sampling method wasn't employed, and the population of this study was considered as sampling itself. A total of 203 teachers working in Suluova District of Amasya Province were recruited in this study. 116 of the participants were male, while the rest of them were female. Developed by Çapa, Çakıroğlu and Sarıkaya (2005), "Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale" and "Organizational Commitment Scale" by Allen and Meyer (1997) as well as a personnel information form were employed to obtain data in this study. A statistical analysis programme was used to analyze the data. Such descriptive statistics as the frequency, the mean, and the standard deviation was calculated in this study. Additionally, t-test, ANOVA and Pearson Correlation Analyses were employed. The findings of the study indicate that the sense of self-efficacy of the teachers were found at high level. There is statistically significant difference based on gender that is in favor of the male participants in sense of self-efficacy. Said another way, the male participants have higher level of sense of self-efficacy levels when compared to the females. What is more, those working in elementary schools have higher scores in sense of self efficacy levels when compared to high school teachers. There is evidence to suggest that there was no statistically difference in age, marital status, the occupational preference in favor of being a teacher upon the profession selection process, the school type they have graduated, work experience, the location of the school and administrative positions. The organizational commitment levels of teachers were calculated as at moderate level. There is statistically significant difference based on gender that is in favor of the male participants in organizational commitment levels. The organizational commitment levels of the male participants were higher that the female participants. In this regard, those teachers who are above 41 years had higher scores than that of those who are between 20-30 ages. Based on the analysis, it was found that the organizational commitment levels of those who have above 26 years of experience has higher scores in terms of organizational commitment when compared to those who have 1-5 or 6-10 years of experience. There is statistically significance in terms of teaching branch in the organizational commitment levels. Accordingly, class teachers had higher scores when compared to Turkish-Literature teachers. In conclusion, there was no statistically difference in age, marital status, the occupational preference in favor of being a teacher upon the profession selection process, the school type they have graduated, work experience, the location of the school and administrative positions in terms of the organizational commitment. The findings clearly indicate that there is a positive correlation between teachers' sense of self-efficacy and their organizational commitment. In a nutshell, it can be concluded that there is a positive significant relation at moderate level between teachers' sense of efficacy and their organizational commitments. Keywords: Self-Efficacy, Teachers' Sense of Self-Efficacy, Organizational Commitment