PERCEPTION OF TEACHING PROFESSION AMONG PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED PRIMARY SCHOOL IN LAGOS STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Teaching profession is not a new area of research and different approaches have been used in order to explain it. Teaching profession is based on vocational and personal skills and competencies, involves professional and ethical standards and models, and entails a continuous process of professional development. In different countries, the recent implemented changes and reforms in educational field require teachers to demonstrate ongoing competences in their roles and adapt to new job requirements. Teachers are often pressed to do more work with fewer resources and are required to obtain high outcomes in their professional activities. Extensive quantitative and qualitative research was based on investigation of teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of their professional activity, job satisfaction, and motivation.

Teachers make decisions in teaching activity based on their experiences, perceptions, values and beliefs about their roles, activities, and responsibilities in schools. Research has indicated that positive teachers’ attitudes and perceptions are fundamental for effective teaching, and teachers’ beliefs, perceptions and attitudes affect their practice and influence the students’ performance (Eggen & Kauchak, 2014). High teachers’ attitudes towards teaching profession have eects on their classroom performance and teaching practice, and are correlated with the burnout level (Ispir, 2010). In order to understand teachers’ attitudes, job satisfaction was used to assess teachers’ attitude towards work (Ahmad & Sahak, 2009). Teachers’ job satisfaction has been recognized as extremely important for implementing any type of education reform, for involving the teacher in life-long learning and for the quality of the teaching-learning process. As a process by which people attach meaning to experience (Eggen &Kauchak, 2014), the perception of teaching profession helps teachers’ to gain meanings and to understand the dierent aspects, experiences, roles, responsibilities and practices from their professional activity. Beginning teachers start their careers with more positive views of their work and work environment that most other professions.

However, after only 8 months of service, when they confronted with the reality of teaching, their positive work perceptions significant declined associated with increasing levels of burnout. Teachers reported that they were required to exert more effort than their more experienced colleagues and this effort required to undertake teaching was greater than the rewards that resulted from being a teacher. This fact suggests a declining overall perception of teaching career during the first 8 months of professional practice (Goddard &O’Brien, 2012; Meerah et al., 2010). The teacher psychological experiences and their perceptions of their workplace can be sources of stress that have the potential to undermine teacher effectiveness (Ransford et. colab., 2009). Yates (2011) investigated the primary school teachers’ perceptions of professional learning activities starting from the principles of the eective teacher professional development.

1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

To all professionals, the way they perceive themselves and the value of their services tend to influence their efficiency and hence productivity. For teachers, such perception is influenced by the views of the public about teaching. A teacher tends to be psychologically handicapped by public perception of the value of his/her service. Teachers tend to be humbled by the psychological pressure put on them by the feeling that, despite their irreplaceable service, their career is not regarded as a profession by the public. According to Nenty (2010), pressure emanating from negative views from the public of teaching as a career by the society tends to reduce the amount of affective and cognitive investments on teaching and learning by teachers and teacher trainees. Such views tend to kill the aspiration and inspirational stamina of teachers. A situational analysis of Nigeria education system has noted that there is a challenge of poor quality teachers, as practicing teachers do not get equitable treatment when it comes to teacher training and professional development (Kgalemang, 2015). The situation needs urgent attention. The report indicates that the issue is compounded by inadequate provision of teacher training related to the new curriculum resulting in teachers oen not being in a good position to implement the curriculum properly. This is an immense challenge which reflects that teaching profession in Nigeria within the context of the teacher developments. As an attempt to address the challenge, it is important to investigate into teaching as a profession as perceived by primary school teachers.