“Do they feel responsible?” Antecedents of teachers’ sense of responsibility.

Over the past twenty years, new responsibilities have been assigned to teachers as a result of education policies based on school autonomy and decentralisation. As a consequence, increasing attention has been placed on teachers’ changing professional role, including their formal level of accountability. However, little is known about teachers’ perceived personal responsibility in the context of their broadened professional roles, its psychological determinants and correlates. The present study was designed to examine the relations between contextual and personal variables that are conceptually linked to personal perceived teachers’ responsibility, including: school climate, self- efficacy beliefs, implicit theories of intelligence, motivations for having chosen teaching as a career and perceptions about the profession. Multiple regression results showed that the sense of perceived responsibility of teachers is affected by personal and contextual variables, specifically by the teacher’s self-efficacy, increment theory of intelligence, and a perceived school positive climate concerning the relationships with students. Implications for practice will be discussed.