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 one 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 act their practice and influence the students’ performance (Eggen & Kauchak, 2014). High teachers’ attitudes towards teaching profession have elects 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 different 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, are 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 sort than their more experienced colleagues and this
sort 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 effective teacher professional development.
