The investigation of the relationship between the self efficacy perceptions and the problem solving skills of classroom teachers

The relationship between self-efficacy perception of classroom teachers and their problem solving skills, a very important component of daily life and socialization, has been investigated in this study. The study is a qualitative one and is in the relational screening model. The universe of the research is composed of 350 classroom teachers working in Palandöken district center of Erzurum province in 2015-2016 academic year. Defining the class teacher sampling; sampling was not applied, but the whole universe was tried to be reached. The "Problem Solving Inventory" developed by Heppner and Petersen (1982) and adapted to Turkish by Şahin, Şahin and Heppner (1993) and The "Teachers' Self Efficacy Scale" developed by Tcshannen-Moran and Woolfolk-Hoy (2001) and adapted to Turkish by Çapa, Çakıroğlu and Sarıkaya (2005) for preservice teachers' self-efficacy beliefs have been used as data collection tools. As a result of this research, it has been determined that while it has been detected significant differentiation on encouraging participation of student and classroom management sub-dimensions according to gender variable, it has been detected significant differentiation on all sub-dimensions according to age and professional seniority variables at "Teachers' Self Efficacy Scale" scores of classroom teachers. Moreover, it has been detected significant differentiations on thinking, avoidant, evaluator sub-dimensions according to gender variable, only on evaluator sub-dimensions according to age variable, and avoidant sub-dimension according to professional seniority variable at "Problem Solving Inventory" scores of classroom teachers. Also, it has been ascertained that there are significant relationship between the self-efficacy perception and the problem solving skills of classroom teachers. Key Words: Teacher, problem solving skills, self efficacy