In this study, the following research questions were set up to analyze the relationship between early childhood teacher's perception of professionalism, job satisfaction and teacher efficacy and to find out the effects of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism and job satisfaction on teacher efficacy.
Research question 1: What is the effect of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism on teacher efficacy?
1-1. What is the effect of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism on teacher efficacy?
1-2. What is the effect of early childhood teachers' job satisfaction on teacher efficacy?
1-3. What is the effect of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism and job satisfaction on teacher efficacy?
This study was conducted as an online questionnaire using Google link for 7 days from October 10 to October 16, 2020 on 300 early childhood teachers working at early childhood education institutions nationwide. Among them, 290 questionnaires were answered, 18 questionnaires that are unusable due to missing or insincere responses were excluded and remaining 272 questionnaires were utilized for the analysis of the final results.
For data analysis of this study, statistics program SPSS 25.0 was used. Frequency analysis was performed to look into general characteristics of study subjects and to calculate frequency and percentage (%). Descriptive statistical values including averages and standard deviations of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism, job satisfaction and teacher efficacy were found and reliability analysis (Cronbach's α) was performed to find out the reliability of the study tools. Pearson's correlation analysis was performed to analyze the relationship between early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism, job satisfaction and teacher efficacy, and simple and multiple regression analyses were performed to find out the effects of perception of professionalism and job satisfaction on teacher efficacy.
The results of the study can be summarized as follows:
First, correlation analysis of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism, job satisfaction and teacher efficacy confirmed that there was significant static correlation between each variable.
Second, analysis on effects of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism on teacher efficacy showed that perception of professionalism had a significant effect on teacher efficacy, and among the subfactors of perception of professionalism, it appeared that professional knowledge and technical demand had the greatest influence.
Third, analysis of early childhood teachers' job satisfaction on teacher efficacy showed that job satisfaction had a significant effect on teacher efficacy, and among the subfactors of job satisfaction, it appeared that relationship with children had the greatest influence.
Fourth, analysis of early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism and job satisfaction showed that the perception of professionalism had a significant effect on teacher efficacy. Also, professionalism of job which is the one of subfactors of perception of professionalism, relationship with the child which is the one of subfactors of job satisfaction apprared that they have a large effect for the theacher efficacy.
These findings indicate that early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism and job satisfaction are important variables that affect teacher efficacy and that the higher the early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism and job satisfaction, the higher the teacher efficacy. It is anticipated that the results of this study will be able to provide basic information and educational implications necessary for development of teacher education programs on early childhood teachers' perception of professionalism, job satisfaction and teacher efficacy.