Teachers’ perceptions on their awareness of social roles and efforts to perform these roles

Abstract

As in the rest of the world, teachers’ roles have been changing in the Turkish educational system. In this process, their roles have been redefined as technical and social roles. In their technical roles, they focus on regular educational core tasks while in their social roles they dwell upon a wide range of social tasks besides teaching. However, there is a tendency to restraining their technical roles, which limits them to dealing with their social roles. As a result, they may lose interest and awareness of their social roles. Therefore, in the research reported on here we aimed to determine teachers’ perceptions of their awareness of their social roles. We also aimed to discover teachers’ efforts to realise these roles. For this purpose, we employed a qualitative phenomenological research design. The data were collected through interviews with 30 participant teachers chosen using the maximum sampling method. The data were analysed with the content analysis method. The results of this research reveal that teachers were mostly aware of their social roles. It was also found that participating teachers strove to realise their social roles. It is recommended that teachers’ social roles are emphasised more during their pre-service education and while performing their roles.

Keywords: social roles; teachers; technical roles