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Background. Bandura defines perceived self-efficacy as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). Teachers’ self-efficacy has been related to teachers’ classroom behaviors and student outcomes such as achievement (Gibson and Dembo, 1984; Tschannen-Moran and Hoy, 2001). Also teachers’ self-efficacy perceptions could be related to their autonomy support in the classroom. Self determination theory suggests that autonomy is one of the basic psychological needs of students (Deci and Ryan, 1987). Students can perceive their teachers’ autonomy supportive behaviors and that perceptions have been related to students’ engagement and learning outcomes (Assor, Kaplan and Roth, 2002).
Purpose. The purpose of this study is to describe the autonomy support and self-efficacy perceptions of primary school teacher’s and to examine the relationships between autonomy support and self-efficacy perceptions.
Method. Survey method was used for this study. The data for this study were gathered from 126 primary school teachers, 71 of whom were male and 55 were female.
The research data were collected by Teacher Autonomy Support Scale and Turkish version of the long form of “Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale” originally developed by Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy (2001). Teacher Autonomy Support Scale is a likert type, 16 item scale which was developed by the author.
Data were analyzed by SPSS 13.0. Arithmetic means and standard deviations of the groups were calculated, independent samples t-test and variance analysis were used to analyze the mean differences between groups. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated to determine relationships between teachers’ autonomy support and their self-efficacy.
Results and discussion. The findings have discerned that teachers’ autonomy support is at medium level and autonomy support doesn’t vary in terms of teachers’ experience. According to Reeve (2009), teachers adopt a controlling motivating style because of cultural values. The controlling teachers were perceived more competent than autonomy supportive teachers by parents and administrators (Reeve, 2009). Cai et al. (2002) also showed that teachers’ autonomy supportive behaviors are related to their personal characteristics.
Also results indicated that teachers’ self-efficacy is positive in general. The primary teachers have perceived themselves less efficient at student engagement dimension. This result is supported by Gençtürk and Memiş’s (2010) study which was conducted on elementary teachers, and Güvenç’s (2010) study which was conducted on pre-service teachers. Teachers’ experience is a remarkable factor for teachers’ self-efficacy perceptions. Ghaith & Yaghi, (1997) reported some decline in teachers` sense of efficacy during teachers’ professional life. Teachers have felt that their effects on students’ learning, has been limited by the more years of experience. They recognize that other factors such as parents’ engagement effects learners more than themselves (Guskey and Passero, 1994). That explains teachers’ low self-efficacy at student engagement dimension.
And also the results indicate that, there is positive significant relationship between teachers’ autonomy support and their self-efficacy for teaching. Teachers, who perceive themselves effective on student engagement and learning outcomes, are supporting autonomy of students. And teachers’ autonomy supportive behaviors are effective on students’ engagement. So teachers’ autonomy supportive behaviors can be accepted as the mediating variable between teachers’ self-efficacy and student engagement. In order to increase student engagement, teachers should be trained about autonomy supportive behaviors and informed about outcomes. Further research, modeling relations between teachers’ efficacy, teachers’ autonomy support and students’ engagement and determine school culture on those relations, is needed to make generalizations.
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