Moderating Effect of Childcare Teachers' Role Conflict on the Relationship Between Professionalism Perception and Teacher Efficacy: Focused on Teachers Having Children

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the moderating effect of childcare teachers' role conflict on the relationship between their professionalism perception and teaching. The subjects were 365 childcare teachers who had children. They were asked to complete the survey on professionalism perception, role conflict in women, and teacher efficacy along with their background information. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 24.0 software. Descriptive, Pearson's correlation analyses, and a hierarchical regression analysis were conducted. As results, first, the childcare teachers with high professionalism perception showed high teacher efficacy, and the childcare teachers with high role conflict showed low teacher efficacy. Second, there was the moderating effect of role conflict on the relationship between professionalism perception and teacher efficacy.

1. Introduction

High-quality early childhood teachers are the key to quality education for young children. Teacher efficacy is the belief that teachers have in their ability to impact student learning [1]. Teacher efficacy has been derived from the classic concept of self-efficacy suggested by Bandura. Bandura [2] noted that an efficacy expectation was the conviction that one could successfully execute the behavior required to produce the outcomes. Self- efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. Bandura described these beliefs as determinants of how people think, behave, and feel. Self-efficacy exists in many domains of human functioning. Specifically in an educational context, teacher efficacy is the teacher’s personal, self-perceived belief in ability to plan instruction and accomplish instructional objectives [3]. It is in effect the conviction the teacher has about his or her ability to teach pupils efficiently and effectively. Teaching efficacy consists of two dimensions; General and personal teaching efficacy. General teaching efficacy refers to the extent to which a teacher believes that his or her students are capable of learning the material, and personal teaching efficacy refers to the extent to which a teacher believes that his or her students can learn under his or her instruction. Teachers’ beliefs in their ability to perform well have been researched in a variety of settings. One study of 1,430 teachers in traditional school settings revealed teacher confidence in their ability to implement effective instructional and classroom strategies leading to positive student engagement [4]. Even though educational institutions have good educational program and environment, the educational outputs eventually depend on teachers who run them. Therefore, it is worthwhile to examine teacher efficacy in the setting of early childhood education.

One of prominent factors that affect early childhood teacher efficacy is professionalism. Professionalism is regarded as the general characteristics required by a professional at the individual level [5]. It refers to the attitudes and behaviors that people in the certain profession may display; their belief in their work, their dedication to their job for a long time, and their freedom to decide by their knowledge as an expert. It is reported that teachers with high level of professional development had the expertise and attitude associated with the field through long-term training [6]. Saracho and Spodek empathized the importance of early childhood teachers’ professionalism perception to provide a quality child care service [7]. Early childhood teachers’ professionalism includes development in terms of knowledge/skills, self-understanding, and ecological environment awareness [8-9]. The results of previous research showed that early childhood teachers’ professionalism is correlated to their teaching efficacy [10-12]. Moreover early childhood teachers’ high level of professionalism was found to have a significantly positive influence on their teacher efficacy [13-14].

On the other hand, labor force participation rate for women has increased due to Korean social changes in women’s high education level and the high rate of dual-income family. According to 2012 National Report of Childcare Status [15], married childcare teachers were 66.6% that was almost double of single childcare teachers. Since Korean government strongly supports to raise birth rate and free childcare, the number of married childcare teachers is expected to be increased. Ahmad [16] reported married women experienced work-family conflict with varying intensities in trying to meet the expectations of work and family roles. Some domestic study found married childcare teachers struggled for work-family conflict [17-18]. Especially, childcare teachers who have children would play several roles at work and home simultaneously including parenting. Their role conflicts were found to be associated with low teacher efficacy and job involvement [19- 20]. In this reason, while examining the relationship between professional perception and teaching efficacy, we selected early childhood teachers who had children as the subjects of this study.

Based on the literature review above, we inferred that early childhood teachers’ professionalism perception would have effect on their teacher efficacy, and its effect would be moderated by their role conflict. Many researchers have agreed on the importance of early childhood teachers’ professionalism and teacher efficacy for high-quality education, but few examined the moderating effect of teachers’ role conflict on the relationship between professionalism and teacher efficacy. We proposed the following research questions.

Research question 1: Are there correlations between childcare teachers’ professionalism perception, role conflict, and teacher efficacy?

Research question 2: Does childcare teachers’ role conflict have the moderating effect on the relationship between their professionalism perception and teacher efficacy?

2. Method

2.1 Subjects and Procedure

Subjects of the study were 365 childcare teachers who were working at 130 childcare centers located in the metropolitan area in South Korea. The convenient sampling method was used to select subjects, and the criteria to recruit subjects was to have at least one child whose age was below 19. The types of childcare centers where the participants worked at were 44.4% home-based, 25.8% private, 25.5% public, and 4.4% work-based. All the subjects were females. Of the subjects, 4.1% were aged between 20 and 29 years, 37.5% were aged between 30 and 39 years, 56.4% were aged between 40 and 49 years, and 1.9% were aged in 50 and over. In terms of years of teaching experience, 35.9% had less than 5 years, 39.2% had 5 to 9 years, 16.4% had 10 to 14 years, and 8.5% had 15 years or more. In level of education, 21.9% graduated from high schools, 35.3% graduated from 2- to 3-year colleges, 38.1% graduated from 4-year universities, and 4.7% graduated from graduate schools. Most subjects had one child (49.6%) or two children (40.0%), and the others had 3 or more (10.4%) children.

Subjects were informed of their rights and assured that their participation in the survey was completely voluntary. The ethical aspects of the study were properly addressed to protect participants’ rights. After volunteers had confirmed their willingness to participate, they were asked to complete questionnaires. Completed questionnaires were then collected.

2.2 Instrument

Teacher efficacy, a dependent variable, was measured using the Teacher Efficacy of Early Childhood Teachers (TE-ECT) scale, which was developed and validated by Lee [21] and then revised for childcare teachers by Kim [22]. The scale consists of 25 statements rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) and has two subcategories: General teacher efficacy and personal teacher efficacy. Cronbach’s α were .81 in this study.

Teachers’ professionalism perception, an independent variable, was measured using the Scale of Teacher’s Professionalism Perception [23]. The scale consists of 53 statements rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) and has three subcategories: Development of knowledge and skills, self-understanding, and ecological development. Cronbach’s α was .96 in this study.

Role conflict, a moderating variable, was measured using the Scale of Role Conflict in Women that was developed by Nevill and Damico [24], translated into Korean by Lee [25] and revised by Yong [26]. The scale consists of 17 statements rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) and has four subcategories: Expectations for self, roles as wife, relations with husband, household management. Cronbach’s α was .94 in this study.

2.3 Data Analyses

The collected data were analyzed utilizing SPSS version 24.0 software (IBM Co., Armonk, NY, USA). Descriptive statistics including means, standard deviations, and frequencies as well as reliability coefficients were used to examine data tendencies and instrument reliability. For the first research question, we conducted Pearson’s correlation analyses to examine the relationship between childcare teachers’ professionalism perception, role conflict, and teacher efficacy. For the second research question, we conducted a hierarchical regression analysis with two models to determine whether role conflict moderated the relationship between professionalism perception and teacher efficacy. As independent variable of the first model, we put years of teaching experience. Teaching experience, one of subjects’ general background characteristics that might be closely related to the dependent variable in the study, was selected as a controlled variable. For the second model, professionalism perception, role conflict, and interaction between two variables were added. In order to prevent the multicollinearity, scores of independent variables in the second model were centered using the mean scores. After finding a statistical significance of interaction between professionalism perception and role conflict, the moderating effect of role conflict was checked. The subjects were divided into two groups that had high or low role conflict, and then slopes of simple regression analyses for two groups were compared. For this, the mean±1SD was used to select two groups of high (larger than ‘mean+1SD’) or low (smaller than ‘mean-1SD’) role conflict. Simple regression analysis for each group was conducted with professionalism perception as an independent variable and teacher efficacy as a dependent variable.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Correlations with the Major Variables

The means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients among the study variables are presented in Table 1. Having calculated simple correlation coefficients in order to examine the interrelation between years of teaching experience, professionalism perception, role conflict, and teacher efficacy, both professionalism perception (r = .57, p < .01) and role conflict (r = -.24, p < .01) along with years of teaching experience (r = .17, p < .01) were revealed to have a statistically significant correlation with teacher efficacy. It means that, for the early childhood teachers who had children, the more years of teaching experience and the higher professionalism perception they had, the higher teacher efficacy they reported. This result support the previous studies about the development of teacher efficacy and the importance of teaching experience and professionalism [6, 9-11]. In addition, the higher role conflict they had, the lower teacher efficacy they reported. Moreover, childcare teachers’ years of teaching experience was positively correlated to their professionalism perception but was not significantly correlated to their role conflict. This result showed the moderating effect of role conflict in the present research was properly set.

Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among Study Variables (N = 365)

** p < .01

3.2. Moderating Effect of Role Conflict on the Relationship Between Professionalism Perception and Teacher Efficacy

We conducted a hierarchical regression analysis to examine the moderating effect of childcare teachers’ role conflict on the relationship between professionalism perception and teacher efficacy (see Table 2 & Figure 1). Prior to conducting a hierarchical regression analysis, the assumptions were tested. The Durbin-Watson value, a measure of the independence of residuals, was 1.85 that proved no problem of correlation to residuals. The multicollinearity statistics of variance inflation factors (VIF) were all within acceptable limits, ranging from 1.04 to 1.15.

As listed in Table 2, both model 1 (F = 10.36, p < .01) and 2 (F = 55.12, p < .01) were statistically significant. This result showed that although childcare teachers’ years of teacher experience alone affected their teacher efficacy, its effect became insignificant when professionalism perception, role conflict, and interaction between two were added as independent variables. According to model 2, factors that affected childcare teachers’ teacher efficacy were their professionalism perception (t = 12.89, p < .001), role conflict (t = -3.57, p < .001), and interaction between two (t = -2.58, p < .05). These variables explained 36.9% of the variance in teacher efficacy (adj. R 2 = .37).

Based on the significant interaction effect between professionalism perception and role conflict, we compared simple regression coefficients for two groups (high and low role conflict) in order to verify the moderating effect of role conflict. As shown in Figure 1, the effect of professionalism perception on teacher efficacy was moderated by the level of role conflict; simple regression coefficient of the group with low role conflict (B = .72) was larger than the one of the group with high role conflict (B = .33).

Figure 1. Moderating effect of role conflict

Table 2. Results of a hierarchical regression (N = 365)

* p < .01, ** p < .01, *** p < .00

4. Conclusion

The purpose of the present study had two folds; (1) to examine the relationship between early childhood teachers’ professional perception, role conflict in women, and teacher efficacy and (2) to verify the moderating effect of childcare teachers’ role conflict on the relationship between their professionalism perception and teaching. The subjects of 365 childcare teachers were asked to complete the survey on professionalism perception, role conflict in women, and teacher efficacy along with their background information. As results, first, childcare teachers with high professionalism perception showed high teacher efficacy, and childcare teachers with high role conflict showed low teacher efficacy. Second, the result of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed the significant interaction effect between professionalism perception and role conflict. In addition, there was the moderating effect of role conflict on the relationship between professionalism perception and teacher efficacy. We could conclude that even though early childhood teachers’ development in professionalism affected their teacher efficacy, married teachers’ role conflict in women moderated this relationship. Specifically, high role conflict of early childhood teachers having children would lead to a reduction of the effect of professionalism perception on their cognition of teacher efficacy. Since teacher efficacy is the key factor that improve teacher competence and student outcomes, the results strongly imply the needs of efforts to alleviate childcare teachers’ role conflict in women. There was few research that purposely sampled the early childhood teachers who had children and examined their professionalism perception, role conflict, and teacher efficacy comprehensively with empirical data. Therefore, the founding of the present study on the mediating effect of role conflict on the relationship between professionalism perception and teacher efficacy has academic significance and practical implication.

There are some limitations in this study, and further research is required. First, the presented study used the convenience sampling method, so there are concerns of lacking generalizability of the results. Second, since the cross-sectional research design was adopted, a causal order of the study variables could not be established. Future longitudinal research design is warranted to extend the present findings. Third, we only used self-report measures to assess the study variables. Future research including multiple types of assessments is encouraged.