School Environment and Career Stages of School Teachers: An Empirical Study
The teacher is the yardstick that measures the achievements and aspirations of the nation. Indian Education Commission (1966) describes teacher as one of the most important factors contributing to the national development. He is the pivot around which all the educational programs, such as curriculum, syllabus, textbooks, evaluation, etc. rotate. Huberman (1992) stated that in a rapid changing society, teachers play an important role to deal efficiently with different challenges and help school to adjust with several changes imposed by the society.Studies on teacher experience focusing on changes during the entire teaching career are scarce. Huberman (1989) focused on teacher's emotional and cognitive characteristics at their successive stages of career development. In another work by Burke et al. (1984) emphasized the personal and organizational factors that influence teacher career phases. Most studies on teacher development focused on short time spans such as pre service teacher education (Conway Clark, 2003; Price, 2001) or the beginning of teaching career (So Watkings, 2005; Woolfolk et al. 2005) Studies focused on differences between novice and expert teachers (Jay, 2002; Castejou Martinez, 2001) In another kind of research it was found that with experience teachers moved from dependent, inflexible, curriculum bound and concerned with discipline to being more relaxed, child centered, interested in a variety of teaching strategies, curriculum development and more involved in professional development (Ryan et al" 1979).Researches showed that environmental conditions affect the teacher career cycle. A supportive, nurturing, reinforcing environment assists a teacher in the pursuit of a rewarding, positive career progression (Burke et al. 1984) A healthy school environment is important because it leads the effective functioning of the school; it motivates everyone related to school like principal, teachers, students, staff and guardians to get involved in the school activities. Teachers who find their work environment supporting and nurturing have self perceptions of competence, worth and satisfaction with their school and find it difficult to leave a responsive workplace (Wu Short, 1996) The organizational conditions of schooling have garnered considerable attention in research on the effects of school characteristics on teacher retention and satisfaction (Ingersoll, 2001).On the basis of above researches it is found that the studies depicting the relation between school environment and career stage are scare in India. In case of secondary and higher secondary school teachers of West Bengal no study is available. Keeping these things in mind the objectives of the present study are as follows: To find out the pattern of school environment and career stages of schoolteachers. To study the effect of demographic variables (e.g. age, education, income &j oh status etc. on career stages of school teachers. To explore the relations of career stages with dimensions of school environment of school teachers. To find out the predictive role of dimensions of school environment on career stages.MethodParticipantsParticipants ofthe study were school teachers selected from different higher secondary schools of Kolkata. Permission to collect data from the school teachers were taken from the concerned school authorities. 430 school teachers were approached for the study among which 300 teachers gave consent to participate. Among 300 teachers 110 were male and 190 were female teachers. The mean age ofthe school teachers was 41.25 years (SD 10.14) The minimum educational level was graduate. The mean teaching experience of the teachers was 14.56 years (SD= 10.06).InstrumentsCareer Stage Scale: This inventory had been used in this study for measuring career stage which was developed by McCormick and Barnett, (2008) This questionnaire consists of 16 items to be rated on a 5 point Likert type scale.