Social Health and Self-Efficacy of Teachers with an Emphasis on Gender Role Self-Concept

Survival, continuity and progress of any society depends on the efficiency and quality of its education. Teachers, as a basis of education, have a very important role in training the next generation, and to be able to play their role properly, they should have the necessary skills and abilities. Hence, self-efficacy and social health has a significant impact on the realization of their individual and professional abilities and competencies. . Social health has five dimensions, including social acceptance, social participation, social actualization, social cohesion and social integration. Social health includes the assessment and understanding of how individuals behave in society and the quality of their relationships with other people, their close relatives and the social groups they are members of.
Self-efficacy is a strong personal belief about the skills and competences to act on a task and succeed in it. On the other hand, social health and self-efficacy are affected by gender-based self-concept. Gender role-based self-concept is influenced by the internalization of gender roles and is determined within the framework of social factors and conditions. Gender role-based self-concept refers to the degree to which a person sees himself as having male or female characteristics. Although the aspects of self-concept are relatively stable over time, gender role-based self-concept has been considered as a variable attribute.. Based on the scores of femininity and masculinity, four types of gender role-based self-concept can be distinguished: feminine, masculine, androgynous, and undifferentiated.
This study was conducted to examine the predictive power of self-concept of gender roles in social health and teachers’ self-efficacy.
The study was an applied and descriptive correlational study. The study population included all male and female teachers serving in Eslamshahr, Tehran . Through cluster random sampling, 12 schools were selected. The target population of 303 people (mean age 39, SD = 97/5), including 251 women and 52 men who were teaching in different disciplines were selected and responded to questions about gender roles Bam (BSRI), Sherer’s General Self-Efficacy (GSE)and Keyes’s Social Well-Being Questionnaire(KSWBQ). Data were analyzed using Chi-square, Pearson correlation and linear regression analysis using SPSS software.
Findings: The results showed that the highest percentage of respondents (41.9%) were in the androgynous group, 25.9% in the femininity gender role group, 16.3% in the undifferentiated gender role group, and the least percentage in the masculinity gender role group (3.8%).
. According to the results, there was a difference between the androgynous and undifferentiated groups in lower self-efficacy. In other words, self-efficacy in the androgynous group was significantly higher than the undifferentiated group. However, there was no relationship between gender roles and social health.
In addition, there was a positive correlation between the gender role of masculinity and femininity with self-efficacy and social health components, indicating that the higher the scores of masculinity and femininity are, the more self-efficacy and social health increase.
In explaining the results, it can be said that androgynous individuals, depending on what is suitable for a particular situation, can realize female-masculine characteristics or a combination of two-sex characteristics. On the one hand, the dominant individual experience is the most effective way to create a sense of efficiency and efficacy. Having a successful experience, leads to more stable and effective beliefs. . On the contrary, failure undermines these beliefs. Therefore, it is expected that when a person has an androgynous role to be able to respond in a manner consistent with the situation, regardless of whether the behavior is only feminine or masculine. As a result, one of the most important sources of self-efficacy, that is, having successful experiences, will be provided. When recruiting the teachers, it should be kept in mind that the self-efficacy and social health of teachers are two factors affecting their performance and the students’ performance. Considering that the results of the present study showed that gender roles have an effect on self-efficacy, training courses on the elimination of gender stereotypes and the beneficial effects of masculinity and femininity can be very influential. Moreover, managers of educational institution can consider a desirable level of such skills as one of the recruitment conditions, which will lead to the development of human resources with high efficiency in education.