Introduction

Employee professional development is an ongoing process, meaning the development of employee skills in social and educational standards for all employees, which increases the total capacity of employees to learn throughout life [1]. In other words, employees' professional development generally refers to the promotion of people in their professional roles. Staff development for training and skills, experience, and expertise is not in one area; it is even for the present and the future. Without development, organizations cannot achieve their short-term and long-term goals [2]. With increasing globalization and international competition, the importance of staff professional development is constantly increasing. In such a way, human resource management and attention to human resources are considered essential factors in organizational success. An excellent and advanced workforce is the difference between effective and ineffective organizations because these employees consider the organization their homeland and strive for its success without any expectation and do not spare any effort in this regard [3-5]. Today, the human resources of any organization as a strategic factor have been considered by researchers. Efficient manpower will bring good results to the organization [3].

With a systematic approach to organization and management, we find that the success of any organization in the optimal integration of resources into an organization, including human resources, capital or financial resources, technology, raw materials, and information, depends on the achievement of organizational goals. Other resources alone will not be able to achieve organizational goals. We conclude that in organizations where the attention of individuals has long been the focus of management experts. This attention increased daily until the beginning of the third millennium when human resources were considered the first customers of government, industrial and commercial organizations. This means that in the present age, meeting the essential needs of employees in any organization is a priority; because achieving the goals of the organization, achieving the logical and legal goals of human resources, and, of course, meeting the needs of human resources also depends on the organization achieving its goals, mission, and missions by employees. Talented managers in industrialized countries often do this. However, in developing countries, human resources and human ability in organization and management are not well known and understood. Thus, it can be seen that in most organizations in developing countries, especially in our country, there is no organizational position called manpower management. No attention is paid to empowering employees, and manpower in organizations is unattended. I, naturally, have job problems. Their efficiency will increase and decrease over that day [4].

Teacher professional development can be related to several variables, one of which is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is one of the critical concepts derived from the psychologist Bandura's theory of social cognition in management and organization. Self-efficacy refers to how people think about their ability to do things and activities. According to this view, people want to do activities that they feel confident in doing, and if people feel unable to do something, they usually avoid doing it. Self-efficacy beliefs directly affect the energy required to perform activities and resist obstacles [5]. Self-thinking is one of the unique and essential abilities in human beings by which they change and evaluate their behavior, and this self-evaluation includes receiving self-efficacy. According to the expectation theory, motivation is primarily the result of people's beliefs about the possible consequences of actions and their value in the consequences. People are motivated to do things when the expected outcome is valuable. However, they will be less prepared to do things when the result is not valuable. Beliefs and expectations about the outcome are related to influential beliefs because these beliefs determine the expectations, and since the expected outcome of the individual because of what they can do is highly dependent on the judgments of their judges, in these cases, if self-perception If efficiency is controlled, expectations of results will undoubtedly play an essential role in predicting behavior [6].

It seems that the growth of self-efficacy is one of the variables that is created through staff training and leads to development in human resources and the organization in general because the development of human resource self-efficacy is the basis of organizational development because the most valuable resource of any organization, human resources are efficient. Most of the investment is for human resources. However, in organizations, managers have an essential role in the process of the organization and its goals so that managers can significantly impact their employees. In addition to self-efficacy, it can increase the productivity of organizations [7].

Entrepreneurship within the organization is also one of the factors that another factor that can be related to professional development in educational leadership. Educational representatives know that principals are the most critical factors in guiding the reform and change of programs of schools and the educational system. Over the next two decades, most countries have focused more on educational reform in schools on the role of principled principals. If researchers have introduced principals as a critical, fundamental, and determining factor in school change. As a rule, improving quality and making fundamental changes in schools depends not only on principals' quality and managerial and professional competencies but also, to a large extent, on their leadership. Research on the effectiveness of schools, in general, shows that the ability of principals to play an influential leadership role is a crucial element of today's schools [8]. Leithwood [9] does not consider day-to-day management methods sufficient to meet schools' emerging and ongoing expectations and challenges and believes that school effectiveness will slow down without leadership roles. The primary task of educational leadership 4 is to improve the learning situation of children. If someone is in the position of educational leader, he cannot be effective in improving the quality of education. His presence in this position is not defensible and justifiable [10]. Teaching children through effective teaching is done by teachers, and educational leadership can influence effective teaching by influencing teachers, generating resources, providing an appropriate learning environment, and motivating. Educational leadership consists of behaviors that can significantly impact teachers' performance in effective teaching and students' academic achievement [10].

According to what has been said in this study, an attempt is made to explain the relationship between educational leadership and teacher self-efficacy with professional development systematically and reliably and to what extent educational leadership and self-efficacy can be related to teachers' professional development. In the studied organization, teachers' professional development level is of particular importance, and addressing this issue can solve many problems of this organization. Education can help a lot in achieving the goals of this organization. The question is that what is the relationship between educational leadership and teacher self-efficacy with professional development (Shandong District 2 primary school teachers)?

Method

Research method: The research method of this research is applied in terms of purpose, in terms of the descriptive method is correlational, and the data collection method is a survey, library, field research, and research without any manipulation and in a natural and real environment and situation. Statistical population, sample size, and sampling method: The statistical population in this study is elementary school teachers in Shandong, China, in the academic year 2020-2021, which are 1260 individuals obtained from Shandong education. The Morgan table was used to determine the sample size, based on which the statistical sample number of 374 people was obtained. The method used for sampling is the multi-stage cluster method.

Data Collection Method

The initial stage was in the form of a library and referring to documents in the field. The required information was collected from Chinese and English texts (articles and books) concerning the relationship between educational leadership and self-efficacy in the professional development of teachers in the next step to collect information from statistical samples of standard questionnaires, and the following is used:

Self-efficacy questionnaire: To measure job self-efficacy, the standard questionnaire [11], which consists of 17 five-point questions, is used, and the validity of this questionnaire has been confirmed in [12]. The degree of reliability was obtained using Cronbach's alpha test of 0.84 [11].

Table 1. Self-efficacy questionnaire

Professional Development Questionnaire: Professional development means a score that the respondents answer 64 questions with a Likert scale and has 10 dimensions. The validity of this questionnaire has been confirmed in the research of [13] Cronbach's alpha test is 0.87..

Table 2. Professional development questionnaire

Educational Leadership Questionnaire: The meaning of educational leadership is the scores that the respondents have 5 dimensions from the implementation of the 45-item questionnaire [14] with the level of distance scale or will be used, and the validity of this questionnaire in [11] confirmed and the reliability was obtained using Cronbach's alpha test of 0.91.

Table 3. Educational leadership questionnaire

Method of data analysis: Data analysis is first descriptive, which includes percentage, frequency, mean, and standard deviation, and in the second part, tests such as Pearson and regression have been used to test the research hypothesis. For this purpose, SPSS statistical software was used to analyze the first 3 questions of the one-sample t-test, the Pearson correlation coefficient test for questions 4-5, and multiple regression tests for the rest of the questions.

Results

Table 4. Results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to determine the normality of the distribution of research variables

Considering that the significant level of test error for the confidence level of 0.95 is more significant than 0.05, it can be said that the distribution of variables of educational leadership, self-efficacy, and professional development is normal and Parametric test (Pearson, regression and one-sample t-test) should be used to analyze the hypotheses.

Table 5. Status of educational leadership, self-efficacy, and professional development of teachers

As seen in Table 5, and considering the mean and significant amount, which is less than 0.05; it can be concluded that this question has been approved, and the level of educational leadership and professional development of primary school teachers in Shandong District 2 is significantly higher than the average and the efficiency variable itself is smaller than average. Also, the average of the statistical sample is 59.3, 86.2, and 62.3, and the average of the comparison criterion 3 (the average of our statistical population), the mean differences are 0.48, -0.14, and 0.62, respectively.

Table 6. Pearson correlation coefficient results to determine the correlation between educational leadership, self-efficacy, and professional development

* Significance of the test at the significance level of 0.05

** Significance of the test at the significance level of 0.01

As the significance level of test error for the confidence level of 0.99 is less than 0.01, it can be said that this hypothesis is confirmed, and there is a significant direct relationship between professional development and educational leadership, and self-efficacy. The correlation coefficient between professional development with educational leadership is 0.48, and self-efficacy is 0.25.

Table 7. Results of multiple regression analysis between educational leadership, self-efficacy, and professional development

To determine the effect of educational leadership and self-efficacy variables as predictor variables and professional development as a criterion variable, they were analyzed by multiple regression analysis using the input method. As can be seen in Table 7, the amount of p observed in all variables except the perceived pleasure dimension is significant. The results demonstrated that the educational leadership variable with the highest impact with beta (BETA = 0.49) and self-efficacy with the most negligible impact with beta (BETA = 0.14) predict the professional development variable.

Table 8. Status of the educational leadership dimensions of Shandong District 2 primary school teachers

According to the results of Table 8 and considering the mean and significant amount that is less than 0.05, it can be concluded that this question has been approved. The level of educational leadership (direct assistance to teachers, professional development of teachers, professional development of teachers as a group, curriculum planning, and action research) of elementary school teachers in Shandong District 2 is significantly higher than the average. Also, according to the average of the statistical sample equal to 40.3, 44.3, 73.3, 63.3, and 75.3 average of comparison criterion 3, which is the same as the average of our statistical population, the mean difference is equal to 0.40, 0.44, 0.73, 0.63, and 0.75, respectively.

Table 9. Status of self-efficacy dimensions of Shandong District 2 primary school teachers

According to the results of the above table and considering the mean and significant amount that is less than 0.05, it can be concluded that this question has been approved, and the level of self-efficacy (tendency to start and different approach to coping) of elementary school teachers in Shandong District 2 is significantly above average. Also, according to the average of the statistical sample equal to 86.3, 70.2, and 82.3, respectively, the average of the comparison criterion 3, which is the average of our statistical population, the mean difference is equal to 0.86, -0.29, and 0.82, respectively.

Table 10. Results of one-sample t-test Status of dimensions of teachers' professional development

Considering the mean and the amount of significance less than 0.05, it can be concluded that this question has been approved. The level of professional development of elementary school teachers in Shandong District 2 is significantly higher than the average (partnership with co-workers to achieve career goals, commitment to exchange educational experiences, willingness to continually evaluate, achieve new learning opportunities and experiences, guide learners' operational research, awareness of educational issues, efforts to improve the quality of teaching, participation in Workshops and seminars, opportunities to exchange experiences and support change).

Also, the average statistical samples equal 48.3, 67.3, 71.3, 72.3, 45.3, 84.3, 64.3, 69.3, 41.3, and 36.3, respectively. Criterion 3, the average of our statistical population, means that the mean difference is 0.48, 0.67, 0.71, 0.72, 0.45, 0.45, 0.64, 0.69, 0.41, and 0.36, respectively.

Table 11. Pearson correlation coefficient results to determine the relationship between educational leadership and self-efficacy of their dimensions with professional development

* Significance of the test at the significance level of 0.05

** Significance of the test at the significance level of 0.01

According to the results of Table 11 and considering that the significance level of test error for the confidence level of 0.95 is less than 0.05, it can be said that there is a significant direct relationship between educational leadership and its dimensions with professional development. The correlation coefficient between professional development with direct assistance to teachers is 0.69, professional development of teachers 0.76, professional development of teachers as a group 0.79, curriculum planning 0.74, and action research 0.69. It can be said that there is a significant direct relationship between self-efficacy and its dimensions with professional development. The correlation coefficient between professional developments with a tendency to start is 0.25, the tendency to expand the effort is 0.34, and the different approach to confrontation is 0.29.

Table 12. Results of multiple regression analysis between dimensions of educational leadership

To determine the impact of the dimensions of educational leadership (direct assistance to teachers, professional development of teachers, professional development of teachers as a group, curriculum planning, action research) as predictor variables and professional development as a criterion variable by multiple regression analysis, Logs were analyzed. As can be seen in Table 12, the amount of p observed in all variables is significant. The results show that the variable of direct help to teachers (BETA = 0.20), the professional growth of teachers with the most negligible impact with beta (BETA = 0 / 16, teachers' professional development (BETA = 0.22), curriculum planning (BETA = 0.23), action research with the most significant impact with beta (BETA = 0.52) predict the professional development variable.

Table 13. Results of Multiple Regression Analysis between Self-Efficacy Dimensions and Professional Development of Non-Standard Coefficients

The effect of self-efficacy dimensions (propensity to initiate, willingness to expend effort, and different approaches to coping) as predictor variables and professional development as criterion variables were analyzed by multiple regression analysis using the input method. As can be seen in Table 13, the amount of p observed in all variables except the tendency to initiate is significant, and the results show that the variable tends to expand effort (BETA = 0.23) and a different method of coping (BETA = 0.24) Predict the professional development variable.

Discussion and Conclusion

In the theory of organization, the importance and necessity of professional development was first stated in the school of human relations and was based on the hypothesis that productivity, flexibility, and prosperity of the organization naturally arise from the professional development of employees and corporate organizations are defined by management trust in subordinates and vice versa, having open communication, joint goal setting between managers and employees, low control, high productivity, absenteeism, and low leave. Self-efficacy beliefs are not a simple prediction of behavior and have nothing to do with "I want to do" but with "I can do" [15]. In this view, individuals are considered self-organizing, active, self-reflective, and self-regulating rather than reactive beings shaped by external events. High self-efficacy leads to stability and endurance. People who feel self-efficacy do not give up easily after failure but look for other ways to achieve their goals. Considering that people with high self-efficacy are confident in their coping skills, they become less depressed and anxious when faced with life problems. High self-efficacy people know their strengths and weaknesses and choose realistic goals. They have reasonable expectations of themselves and are aware of the benefits of using problem-focused coping (problem-oriented) and emotion-focused coping (emotion-focused) because they are confident in their coping skills. They never avoid life's complex problems because they know they can handle them [16]. The results show that the educational leadership variable with the highest impact with beta (BETA=0.49) and self-efficacy with the most negligible impact (BETA = 0.14) predict the professional development variable. The average scores of educational leadership, self-efficacy, and professional development are above average. There is a significant relationship between educational leadership and self-efficacy in professional development. The average educational leadership, self-efficacy, and professional development scores are higher than average. The results are in line with the research results. Based on the results obtained and the experiences gained in the research, suggestions are given by the researcher:

1. It is suggested to increase the factors of teachers' self-efficacy and professional development among teachers and, in some cases, the dimensions of educational leadership (teacher assistance, teacher growth, action research, teachers' collective growth, curriculum) that increase teachers' self-efficacy. Also, professional development can be given special attention, and planning at the macro and micro levels of education can be implemented.
2. Education officials must have the capacity to establish networked relationships with other organizations. Inability, in this case, leads to a lack of communication and information in various areas of the organization and distrust among teachers. These relationships and sharing of experiences can provide the basis for the professional development of individuals.

Considering that every organization seeks professional development of human resources and human resources play a crucial role in achieving the goals of the organization and considering that reducing the quality of educational leadership in the organization is detrimental to the professional development of teachers, it is suggested that the education organization pays close attention to the quality of educational leadership and categories such as education, teamwork, interpersonal relationships, skills, and organizational communication among teachers because the professional development of teachers is the scientific and cultural development of a society.

Citation M. Hedayatnia*, A.H. Yalveh, M. Kakaie Sarjobi, H. Sanaeifard, S. Azizi, S. Derakhshan, Evaluating the Relationship between Educational Leadership and Teacher Self-Efficacy with Professional Development of Shandong Primary School Teacher. Int. J. Adv. Stu. Hum. Soc. Sci. 2023, 12 (1):31-42.

       https://doi.org/10.22034/IJASHSS.2023.364536.1112

Copyright © 2023 by SPC (Sami Publishing Company) + is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License(CC BY)  license  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.