Humility and forgiveness as predictors of teacher self-efficacy

This study explores the predictive influence of teachers’ humility and forgiveness on their self-efficacy perceptions. The population of this research consists of teachers who work at public primary and secondary schools located in the central districts of Ankara, Turkey. The sample of the study is composed of 303 primary and secondary school teachers working in central districts of Ankara, Turkey. The research design is a correlational study identifying the direct predictive powers of humility and forgiveness on teacher self-efficacy. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient identifies the inter-variable exploratory correlations, while path analysis examines the direct predictive powers of these factors on teacher self-efficacy. The analyses show positive and significant relationships among teacher self-efficacy, humility and forgiveness. Humility and forgiveness are found to positively predict teacher self-efficacy. The findings are discussed in the context of teacher self-efficacy and positive psychological state improvement and teacher training.


INTRODUCTION
An increasing interest in positive psychology and its variables and concepts such as well-being, pleasure, joy, zest, happiness, optimism, hope and enthusiasm is observed.Formerly and mistakenly, humility and forgiveness were perceived as a weakness and neglected in scientific research.Contrary to such beliefs, recent research consider humility and forgiveness as strengths of the character rather than weaknesses (Peterson and Seligman, 2004;Seligman, 2002;Seligman and Csikzsentmihalyi, 2000).In a complementary way, self-efficacy is seen as a positive feature for educational research (Hoy and Tarter, 2011).
As a notion of positive psychology, humility is perceived as an insignificance feeling in relation to low self-esteem which is an incorrect perspective (Tangney, 2002).In fact, humility is a value that requires courage, selfesteem, self-respect and respect towards others and it lacks self-respect and cowardice.Additionally, humble people embrace learning and teaching and teachers feel humility is adopting democracy instead of autocracy in classroom environment (Freire, 1998).Humble teachers may be more dedicated and easily receive peer support for their professional and personal development.
Moreover, to increase student participation and success, a democratic classroom environment where values support a participative atmosphere should be internalized by teachers.Adoption of humility by teachers and transformation of such a value into an effective behaviour develop both teacher-student communication and the quality of learning.
Literature reveals a positive relation between humility and strengths of character like self-esteem (Exline and Geyer, 2004), generosity (Exline and Hill, 2012), extroversion (Oh et al., 2011), openness to experience (Lee et al., 2010) and social communication (Peters et al., 2011).In this respect, literature introduces several findings on humble teachers who act respectfully, are open to new experiences, adopt democracy in classroom environment, and establish excellent social communication with high levels of self-respect.
Forgiveness, like humility, is also a neglected construct in the organizational studies (Bradfield and Aquino, 1999).Like humility, forgiveness is also accepted as a positive psychology term and a positive characteristic (Peterson and Seligman, 2004).Some studies indicate a positive relation between forgiveness and well-being (Bono et al., 2008;Krause and Ellison, 2003;Toussaint and Friedman, 2009), happiness (Maltby et al., 2005), empathy (Toussaint and Webb, 2010) and self-esteem (Eaton et al., 2006).In this perspective, it can be inferred that teachers with high level of forgiveness may feel better, be happier, have higher self-respect and establish a better empathy with their students.Additionally, forgiveness is negatively related to depression (Burnette et al., 2009), anger (Mohammadpour and Balaghat, 2013) and stress (Harris et al., 2006).Concordantly, humility and forgiveness are studied as positive values for teachers.This study focuses on the relationship between teacher perceptions of humility and forgiveness with teacher self-efficacy, which is widely regarded as a positive teacher feature.
The aforementioned studies associate self-efficacy with positive psychology variables so does humility and forgiveness.Taken as a tripartite structure, some studies indicate a positive relation between humility and forgiveness (Çardak, 2013;Dwiwardani et al., 2014;Powers et al., 2007).In addition, some findings show a positive relationship between self-efficacy and forgiveness (Baghel and Pradhan, 2014) and humility (Vieluf et al., 2013).It is essential to identify how teachers perceive humility and forgiveness in the context of Turkish culture to see the meanings ascribed as character features.Examining all these variables in a single study is believed to contribute to the understanding of the concurrent interactions.

Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy was put forward by Bandura (1977) in the framework of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986).Self-efficacy influences the behaviours of individuals and is affected by actions and conditions (Shunk and Pajares, 2002).It is defined as one's belief in successfully maintaining the actions to achieve a desired goal (Bandura, 1977).According to Bandura (1986), none of thought types affecting action takes more participation than the judgement related to people's capacity in the control of influential events.
Social cognitive theory stresses the important role selfefficacy plays on human behavior.Self-efficacy belief is not dependent on personal abilities but people can believe in their abilities, hence in their success.These beliefs affect people's plans and opinions (Zeldin et al., 2006).Self-efficacy directly affects individual behaviours (Bandura, 2012).Research points out a positive relation between teachers' perception of their own capacity and their behaviours supporting student success (Goddard and Goddard, 2001).Teacher's evaluation of self-efficacy leads to positive changes in students' behaviours (Gibson and Dembo, 1984).Teacher self-efficacy motivates and encourages them to create an effective learning environment and an effective academic process for students' success (Bandura, 1993).Self-efficacy affects individual behavior and collective normative environment and creates expectation for success (Goddard and Goddard, 2001).In conclusion, teacher self-efficacy affects countless teacher behaviours and it supports student success.

Forgiveness
Forgiveness and humility are defined as two character strengths in Peterson and Seligman's (2004) positive psychology classification.In terms of psychology, forgiveness is a multi-dimensional process including cognitive, emotional, motivational and social features (Witviliet, 2009).Forgiveness is a tendency that hinders destructive reactions in relationships and encourages constructive behaviours when treated destructively by others (McCullough et al., 1997).Forgiveness is claimed to be a useful process for solving interpersonal and intrapersonal problems (Denton and Martin, 1998).
Although discussions continue about the definition of forgiveness, some main points are agreed on.Researchers agree that forgiveness does not mean forgetting, ignoring, excusing crimes and giving up reconciliation and legal accountability.Many researchers explain that forgiveness includes a serious and conscious decision-making process for giving up revenge and forgiving mistakes (Exline et al., 2003).Another definition describes forgiveness as giving a second chance to people when they make mistakes and not nurturing grudges (Peterson, 2006).Forgiving is a complex motivational change after an explicit insult in interpersonal relations.When the offended person forgives, his/her motivation may change towards searching for revenge, avoiding interaction with the guilty person or maintaining the positive relation (McCullough et al., 2001).

Humility
Although humility, regarded as another strength of character, has been considered equal to worthlessness and low self-respect for a long time, it is actually a sign of richness.Humility is a multidimensional structure, characterized by truly evaluating self-characteristics, accepting the limits of abilities and forgetting own self (Tangney, 2002).When a person is humble, he/she understands his/her own limits and becomes aware of ends (Snow, 1995).Humble people have an open attitude that includes the feeling of being true selfevaluation.Humility represents an attitude against pride and arrogance ( Exline and Geyer, 2004).
True humility requires one to truly evaluate his/her abilities and the position in the universe.It requires accepting one's own limitations and forgetting oneself (Tangney, 2002).The main components of humility are defined as: 1) true evaluation of personal abilities and achievements; 2) ability to accept own mistakes, defects and limitations; 3) openness to new ideas, contrary information and suggestions; 4) knowing the position in the world; 5) less focus on oneself accepting to be a piece of a great universe; 6) appreciating the idea that people can contribute to our world in many different ways (Tangney, 2009).
Apart from positive psychology, forgiveness and humility are appreciated in many religions (Peterson and Seligman, 2004).In Turkish culture, Mawlana (b.1207Mawlana (b. d.1273) stresses the importance of humility and forgiveness with his famous speech "Be like the running water for generosity.Be like the sun for grace and mercy.Be like the night to cover others' faults.Be like death for rage and anger.Be like the Earth for humility.Appear as you are.Be as you appear."Also Sheikh Edebali (b.1206Edebali (b. d.1326) advices Osman Gazi (b.1258Gazi (b. -d.1326) "O Son!You are Master!From now on, anger is ours and compliance is yours; disagreement is ours and restoring is yours; accusing is ours and excuse is yours; mistake is ours and tolerance is yours; evil eye and words are ours and forgiveness is yours!" The aforementioned studies on the concepts of humility and forgiveness confirm that these character traits have strengths rather than weaknesses.It is expected that humble individuals should be open to confronting their mistakes, be able to give up on themselves when necessary, be modest in their self-assessment, and focus on other people in their relationship (Elliot, 2010).People with a high level of forgiveness are expected to be forgiving towards themselves, others and situations and to continue their relationship with other people (Thompson et al., 2005).Thus, it can be expected that the humble and forgiving teachers can be individuals who can put their mutual relations on a positive ground, develop themselves by confronting their mistakes, evaluate themselves as they are, focus on the students and care for their needs and successes, forgive herself/himself against mistakes and can continue to maintain their relationship in a healthy manner by forgiving them when others make mistakes.All these humble and forgiving characteristics are closely related to teaching processes.In this context, humility and forgiveness can be related to teacher self-efficacy, which conceptualizes teachers' perceptions of providing student participation, implementing effective teaching strategies and effective classroom management.
Humility and forgiveness are perceived valuable in both positive psychology and Turkish culture, as many others.Moreover, several studies list humility (Brady, 2011;Vagle, 2011) and forgiveness (Reichardt, 2001) as necessary teacher qualifications.Scientific understanding of humility presents a deliberate guidance to families, teachers and social leaders (Tangney, 2009).On the other hand, understanding of these notions through quantitative studies is seen as beneficial.This study aims to determine whether such notions are perceived as positive values in Turkish culture by analysing their relationship with self-efficacy, described as one's belief on being successful in any task.This study may provide findings for decision makers of education and school administrators on the values to be integrated to pre and in-service teacher training and teacher self-efficacy levels to be improved.Thus, answers are sought for the following research questions: 1. Are there significant relationships among teachers' perceptions of self-efficacy, humility and forgiveness?2. Do teachers' perception of humility and forgiveness significantly predict their self-efficacy perceptions?

Model
The research design is a correlational study identifying the direct

Population and sampling
The population of this research consists of teachers who work at public primary schools and secondary schools located in the central districts of Ankara.There are a total of 28525 teachers in 845 public primary and secondary schools in central districts of Ankara.In the population, 79% of the teachers are female (n = 22425) and 21% are male teachers (n = 6100).It is indicated that for large populations, samples of 300 to 500 persons are often adequate (Lodico et al., 2006).In this context, the sample of this research consists of 303 teachers.The sample is selected through convenience sampling model.

Data collection tools
In this research, Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES), which has been developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001) and adapted to Turkish by Çapa et al. (2005), was utilized to measure the self-efficacy level of teachers.Humility Scale (HS), developed by Elliot (2010) and adapted to Turkish by Sariçam et al. (2012), was used to measure humility levels.Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS), developed by Thompson et al. (2005) and adapted to Turkish by Bugay and Demir (2010), is used to measure forgiveness levels.The results of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) of the scales are given in the Table 1.

Teachers' sense of efficacy scale (TSES)
In the research, Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale -TSES, developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001) and adapted to Turkish by Çapa et al. (2005) The grading options of the scale items are "None at all = 1" and "A great deal = 9".There are no reciprocal scaling items in the scale and high grades for each factor indicates high self-efficacy.
According to validity and reliability tests of the scale conducted by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001), reliability coefficients of subscales are found as 0.81 for student engagement, 0.86 for instructional practices and 0.86 for classroom management.Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of the items in the scale is found to be 0.90.According to validity and reliability tests of the scale conducted by Çapa et al. (2005), reliability coefficients of subscales are found as 0.82 for student engagement, 0.86 for instructional practices and 0.84 for classroom management.Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of the items in the scale is found 0.93.According to the results of explanatory factor analysis (EFA) of the scale, scale items are gathered in three factors but factor loading of some of these items are not appropriately (evenly) distributed.Thus, these items are omitted from the scale and the remaining 17 items are evaluated.According to EFA results of the remaining 17 items, scale items are gathered under three factors: SE towards student engagement, SE towards instructional practices and SE towards classroom management.Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of SE towards student engagement is found as 0.81, Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of SE towards instructional practices as 0.69, Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of SE towards classroom management is 0.83 and Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of the whole scale is found 0.87.Also, it is seen that this three-factor structure explains 51.41% of total variance.The three-factor structure of TSES was verified by CFA and revealed that this threefactor model had an acceptable level of goodness of fit index ( 2 / df = 1.91,RMSEA = 0.055, CFI = 0.97, GFI = 0.92).

Humility scale (HS)
Humility scale (HS), which has been developed by Elliot (2010) and adapted to Turkish by Sarıçam et al. (2012), is used to measure humility levels of the teachers.The scale aims to measure the overall level of individuals' humility and humility on the scale is considered both as a psychological structure and a moral virtue.The scale has 4 subscales: three-item openness (example item: When confronted with my mistakes, my first response is to explain why I did it.),three-item self-forgetfulness (example item: When someone else is being recognized, I think about my accomplishments), four-item modest self-assessment (example item: I often wish I was as talented as my peers) and three-item focus on others (example item: I feel honoured when others ask for my help).For teachers, the dimension of openness means that teachers accept their mistakes instead of producing excuses when they made mistakes in relation to their students or in their failures.
The dimension of self-forgetfulness implies that teachers should not boast of their successes or do not expect praise.The modest selfassessment refers to the fact that teachers do not see themselves superior to other people in the face of success or do not see themselves below other people in the face of their failures.The dimension of focusing on others implies that teachers value sacrifice for their students and consider helping their students as an honorable behavior.The scale has 13 5 -point Likert items.The grading options of the scale are defined as "strongly disagree = 1" and "strongly agree = 5".The first 6 items of the scale are reversely graded and high grades for each factor indicate high humility level for that factor.According to validity and reliability tests of the scale conducted by Sarıçam et al. (2012), reliability coefficients of subscales are found as 0.63 for openness, 0.67 for selfforgetfulness, 0.72 for modest self-assessment and 0.79 for focus on others.
EFA results of the scale show that the subscales openness and self-forgetfulness can form one single factor.According to EFA results, after 3 items are omitted from the scale due to inappropriate distribution of factor loading, the items of the scale form three factors: openness-self forgetfulness, modest self-assessment and focus on others.Cronbach's alpha coefficient of opennessself forgetfulness is found to be 0.60, Cronbach's alpha coefficient of modest self-assessment as 0.58, Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of focus on others as 0.70 and that of the whole scale as 0.70.Also, it is seen that this three-factor structure explains 56.63% of total variance The three-factor structure of HS was verified by CFA and revealed that this three-factor model had an acceptable level of goodness of fit index ( 2 / df = 2.56, RMSEA = 0.073, CFI = 0.92, GFI = 0.95).

Heartland forgiveness scale (HFS)
HFS developed by Thompson et al. (2005) and adapted to Turkish by Bugay and Demir (2010), is used to measure forgiveness levels.The scale contains 6 items grading forgiveness of self (example item: Learning from bad things that I have done helps me get over them), 6 items grading forgiveness of others (example item: If others mistreat me, I continue to think badly of them) and 6 items grading forgiveness of situations (example item: I eventually make peace with bad situations in my life).Pedagogically, for teachers, the dimension of forgiveness of self shows that teachers can comfort themselves without any grudge against the negativities and mistakes they have experienced.The dimension of forgiveness of others shows that the teachers do not act strictly on the students against their mistakes, to understand them, do not desire to punish them and can leave behind their frustrations against the students.However, the dimension of forgiveness of situations refers to the fact that teachers are not stuck in negative thoughts against the uncontrollable negative situations that they live in school and finally get away from negative feelings.The scale has 18 items graded between "Almost always false of me = 1" and "Almost always true of me = 7".High grades for each subscale indicate high forgiveness level for that factor and the total high grade for the whole scale means that the person has a high level of forgiveness.Several items of the scale (2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17) are reversely graded.According to validity and reliability tests of the scale carried out by Thompson et al. (2005), reliability coefficients of subscales are found as, 0.75 for forgiveness of self, 0.78 for forgiveness of others and 0.77 for forgiveness of situations.The reliability coefficient for the whole scale is found to be 0.86.According to validity and reliability tests of the scale carried out by Bugay and Demir (2005), reliability coefficients of subscales are found to be 0.64 for forgiveness of self, 0.79 for forgiveness of others and 0.76 for forgiveness of situations.The reliability coefficient for the whole scale is found to be 0.81.
EFA results of the scale illustrate that the subscales forgiveness of others and forgiveness of situations can form a single factor.According to EFA results, it was shown after 1 item is omitted from the scale due to inappropriate distribution of factor loading, the items of the scale are gathered under two factors, which are: forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others and situations.Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of forgiveness of self is found to be 0.55, that of forgiveness of others and situations is 0.80 and that of the whole scale is 0.80.Also, this two factor structure explains 56.62% of total variance.The two-factor structure of HFS was verified by CFA and revealed that this two-factor model had an acceptable level of goodness of fit index ( 2 / df = 3.01, RMSEA = 0.082, CFI = 0.80, GFI = 0.88).

Data analysis
Initially, the data set was examined to identify mistaken values, outliers, normality and multicollinearity.No mistaken data input was found during this process.After the missing value analysis, very few items that are randomly left empty are given values through expectationmaximization (EM) algorithm.Pearson productmoment correlation coefficient defined the relationships between self-efficacy, humility and forgiveness of the teachers.Coefficient of correlation explains the level and direction of the relation between variables (Büyüköztürk, 2011).In the research, path analysis defines the predictability of independent variables on dependent variables.In this context, several goodness of fit indices were analysed.Accordingly, Byrne (1998) and Jöreskog and Sörbom (1993) declared the most commonly fit indexes as  2 , GFI, AGFI, CFI, RMSEA and AIC indices.As  2 is sensitive to sample size, it is advised to be used with other fit indices.The criterion for fit indices included  2 / df being less than 5, GFI's being more than 0.90 and CFI more than 0.95 and RMSEA being 0.06 or less.

Relations between teachers' self-efficacy, humility and forgiveness levels
The relationships between teachers' self-efficacy, humility and forgiveness levels are given in Table 2.As shown in Table 2, there is a significant positive relation between self-efficacy and humility (r = 0.19, p < 0.01) and forgiveness (r = 0.29, p < 0.01).It can be interpreted that when teachers' levels of humility and forgiveness increase, self-efficacy levels increase as well.The table also shows a significant positive relation between humility levels and forgiveness levels of teachers (r = 0.32, p < 0.01).Except for the relations between scales and their subscales and between these subscales, highest level of significant relation is observed between opennessself forgetfulness and forgiveness (total) (r = 0.34, p < 0.01) and opennessself forgetfulness and forgiveness of others and situations (r = 0.34, p < 0.01), while the lowest level of relation is between self-efficacy (total) and opennessself forgetfulness (r = 0.14, p < 0.05).

Predictability of humility and forgiveness on teachers' perception of self-efficacy
A path analysis defines how and in what direction do The model displayed an acceptable level of goodness of fit index ( 2 / df = 1.69 < 5, RMSEA = 0.05, CFI = 0.99, NFI = 0.97, GFI = 0.99, AGFI = 0.97, RMR = 0.01).humility and forgiveness levels of teacher predict the level of self-efficacy.Through the path analysis, direct predictability effect (predictor effects) of the independent variables on dependent variables is shown.The level of goodness of fit index concerning the research model is shown in Table 3. Standardized path coefficients related to predictability of teachers' level of humility and forgiveness on their level of self-efficacy are given in the Figure 1.Predictability effects of independent variables on selfefficacy are given in Table 4.
Standardized path coefficients shown in Table 4 indicate that humility and forgiveness are positive significant predictors of self-efficacy.Forgiveness predicts self-efficacy more effectively (β = 0.29) than humility (β = 0.14).In addition, humility and forgiveness explain 13.2% of total variance related to self-efficacy.

DISCUSSION
This research investigates the relationship between teachers' humility and forgiveness levels, and their selfefficacy levels.A significant and positive relation between teachers' humility, forgiveness and self-efficacy levels is identified.According to the results of path analysis predicting self-efficacy, humility and forgiveness are significant and positive predictors of self-efficacy.Some of the research resulted in positive relation between selfefficacy and forgiveness (Baghel and Pradhan, 2014).(Çardak, 2013;Dwiwardani et al., 2014;Powers et al., 2007).In this respect, the results of this research are consistent with the literature.In this study, humility and forgiveness are found to be positively related to self-efficacy.Humility has been considered as equal to an insignificance feeling and low self-esteem (Tangney, 2002).Likewise, forgiveness is an ignored structure in organizational studies (Bradfield and Aquino, 1999).However, results of the study reveal that self-efficacy levels of teachers increase as their forgiveness and humility level increase.Thus, according to results of this study, in parallel with the studies indicating that humility and forgiveness are positive character features (Peterson and Seligman, 2004) and they are positively related to variables of positive psychology (Exline and Hill, 2012;Lee et al., 2010), humility and forgiveness predict self-efficacy.In other words, teachers believe that they are able to establish better student participation, apply instruction strategies better and manage the classroom effectively when their humility and forgiveness levels are high.
Studies on the relations between self-efficacy and positive psychology variables show the positive relation of self-efficacy with optimism (Chemers et al., 2000;Hulbert and Morrison, 2006;McGuigan and Hoy, 2006;Robinson and Snipes, 2009;Akhtar et al., 2013), hope (Bryant and Cvengors, 2004;Kumarakulakisignam, 2002;Lackaye et al., 2006;Robinson and Snipes, 2009), selfesteem (Khan et al., 2015) and zest for work (Sezgin and Erdogan, 2015).With the results of these researches, self-efficacy is believed to have a positive relation with positive psychology variables.In this context, the results of this research are in line with the literature of positive psychology.
Positive psychology concentrates on positive feelings rather than drawbacks, and aims to improve the quality of work and life.Individuals with a positive psychological state are likely to be healthy, happy, flexible and productive.Studies on the relationship between concepts of positive psychology and individual as well as organizational variables might help to investigate the positive psychology dimensions of school organizations.
Moreover, studies on different educational levels or that use a sample of group of schools with different socioeconomic levels should be addressed.Since high level of self-efficacy are thought to increase teacher's performance and student academic success (Bandura et al., 1996;Caprara et al., 2006;Usher and Pajares, 2006), further researches on relation between teachers' selfefficacy levels and other positive psychology variables will make great contribution to the literature.This study considers the notions examined at the cognitive perception level, so practice-oriented future research is necessary to advance the field to a greater extent.However as a strength of character humility and forgiveness seen that the values to be transferred to the students and are the values that teachers should have as a model in front of students (Brady, 2011).In this context, it can be said that it would be beneficial to increase the humility and forgiveness level of teacher candidates in the undergraduate education process and/or teachers who are currently working, in the context of increasing teacher performance and student achievement.

Table 1 .
CFA results of scales.
, was used to measure the selfefficacy level of teachers.The scale has 24 items in nine point Likert type.The scale has three subscales: 8 -item selfefficacy towards student engagement (example item: How much can you do to motivate students who show low interest in school work?), 8 -item self-efficacy towards instructional practices (example item: To what extent can you provide an alternative explanation for example when students are confused?)and 8 -item self-efficacy towards classroom management (example item: How much can you do to control disruptive behaviour in the classroom?).

Table 3 .
Fit indices concerning the model.

Table 4 .
Predictability effects of independent variables on self-efficacy.