Examining of the autonomy behaviors, self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes of secondary school teachers towards their profession

The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between the secondary school teachers' autonomy behavior, self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes towards the profession. The universe of the research is composed of 8552 teachers working in secondary schools in İzmir central districts in 2017-2018 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 507 teachers working in secondary schools in the central districts of İzmir and participating in the research voluntarily. In the research, "Personal Information Form", "Teacher Autonomy Scale", "Teacher Self-efficacy Belief Scale" and "Attitude Scale towards Teaching Profession" were used as data collection tools. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics (arithmetic mean, standard deviation), as well as t-test, ANOVA and correlation analyzes were used, and analyzes were done using the SPSS program. According to the findings, it was determined that the teachers who participated in the study had high total autonomy, self-efficacy and attitude towards the profession. While there was no significant difference between all sub-dimensions of the autonomy scale, academic, social, intellectual self-efficacy sub-dimensions and gender, there was a significant difference between the professional self-efficacy sub-dimension, attitude total score and gender in favor of female teachers. While there was no significant difference between the branch variable and all sub-dimensions of the autonomy scale, attitude total score, and professional, social, intellectual self-efficacy sub-dimensions, there was a significant difference in the academic self-efficacy sub-dimension. While there was a significant difference between the seniority variable and autonomy, no significant difference was found between self-efficacy and attitude. In this study, where the relationship between teachers' autonomy, self-efficacy and attitudes towards the profession was examined, the relationship between the three variables was found to be positive, weak and significant. The weak relationship between the three variables contradicts the results of the studies in the literature. Finally, based on the results obtained from the study, suggestions for application and research are included. Keywords: Teaching Profession, Autonomy, Self-Efficacy, Attitude