Teachers’ efficacy: promoting job commitment and job satisfaction

BACKGROUND - Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of teachers’ job commitment and active participation, which is why teachers’ self-efficacy is an appropriate element to be used in implementing large-scale prevention policies and interventions in schools. Recent studies have shown that within the Italian school system teachers’ self-efficacy does in fact influence teachers’ job satisfaction and commitment to their school. OBJECTIVES - This paper is an in-depth analysis of the soundness and validity of a theoretical model regarding the influence of self-efficacy, collective and personal, on two key organisational variables - job commitment and job satisfaction - within the school context, in light of the central role played by the perception of the quality of the work environment. This study investigates the psychosocial wellbeing within the school context among a sample of 375 teachers drawn from Italian primary and middle (junior high) schools. METHODS - The theoretical model was checked against data using structural-equation models, a statistical tool that allows an empirical test of the degree to which a theoretical model explains the empirical co-variance observed within a set of empirical data. RESULTS - This study attests to the validity of the proposed theoretical model, and reveals the pivotal role of teachers’ personal self-efficacy beliefs in influencing important organisational variables such as perception of the work environment, commitment to the organization and job satisfaction. The perception of the work environment mediates the influence of personal efficacy on collective efficacy, which in turn, influences job commitment and job satisfaction. These causal relationships play a very important role in and influence on teachers’ participation in creating personal and organizational psychosocial wellbeing.