A Survey and Comparison of School Teacher's Perceived Level of Work Autonomy at Schools

Introduction The present study aimed at investiagating and comparing the teachers’ perceived level of work autonomy at schools and focused on this concept based on demographic variables of gender, academic degree, service education level, and work experience.
Method A positivist approach with a descriptive survey method is applied in this quantitative research. Research sample included all working teachers in the city of Sanandaj during the school year of 2012-2013, who were 5862 instructors based on the statistics provided by Sanandaj’s educational system. The proposed sample size consists of 361 teachers who were selected based on Krejcie and Morgan table (1970). However, due to the fact that a small increase in sample size did not waste time and money, in order to improve the results and reduce the error rate, 413 questionnaires were distributed among teachers through cluster random sampling. First, a cumulative list of clusters, namely, educational districts of the city of Sanandaj was prepared for the implementation of the sampling. Then, random sampling was performed in all different primary and secondary levels of education and all teachers working at those schools were included in the research sample. The importance of the subject of teacher autonomy in research and practice has led to the demand for the development of an appropriate psychometric instrument to measure the teacher’s autonomy, however, there is no definitive instrument to measure autonomy. Therefore, in order to answer the research questions, the questionnaire of "Appropriate Teacher WorkAutonomy" adapted from the work of Friedman (1999) was used. He presented a model that divided teacher's autonomy into the following five categories: 1) Lack of independence, 2) Low independence, 3) Balanced independence, 4) High independence, 5) Full independence. The questionnaire has 32 items in six sub-scales (including, forming the identity and performance of school, teaching and progress evaluation, parental involvement, staff development, extracurricular subjects, curriculum change and modification) and measures the extent to which teachers are expected to work normally and independently, by teachers themselves. The items are set on a Likert scale of five degrees and demonstrate different degrees of work autonomy from lack of independence to complete independence.
Results Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to test the reliability of the questionnaire. The alpha values of all questionnaire items were above the acceptable level of 0.70 and ranged from 0.86 to 0.94. Therefore, the internal consistency of questionnaire items and components was confirmed. Confirmatory factor analysis method was used to test the content validity of teachers’ autonomy questionnaire. Since all goodness of fit indexes showed the fitness of model, it could be argued that the content validity of research questionnaire has been approved for implementation in Iranian educational environments. To test the hypotheses according to the type of data distribution, one-sample t-test, t-test with two independent-samples and one-way analysis of variance were used. The findings demonstrated that teachers generally rated their job autonomy levels, below the average level of the relevant scale. Teachers assessed their independence in terms of identity formation, decision-making on parental involvement, professional development, and extracurricular subjects, below the average level. Also, their self-assessment of the degree of independence in the area of teaching and academic progress evaluating was moderate and, in the area of curriculum modification and development, was higher than the average level. It appeared that teachers had little impact on curriculum development, but the results of teacher's responses illustrated the contrary. This might be due to several factors: First, it was likely that teachers were satisfied with the content of textbooks and had positive views of them, so there was no need to change the content of textbooks. In addition, this claim of high independence in the area of curriculum development might be related to a specific grade specially, elementary grade. For demographic variables, there was a significant difference between the degree of teachers’ work autonomy in terms of their service education level, academic degree and field of study, but there was no significant difference between the average scores of teacher's self-assessment regarding their level of autonomy in terms of gender and work experience.
Discussion The results of this study feature useful implications: First, it highlightes the role of school principals as being able to moderate the autonomy of teachers. Hence, it is suggested that trusted and brave principals develop the kind of organizational culture in which the professional autonomy of teachers may be strengthened and promoted. Second, it seems that many educational reform programs conducted in schools had not been in line with teacher's professional viewpoints which can affect their sense of autonomy and, consequently, their level of job satisfaction. Teachers with low job engagement or low motivation are costly for two reasons: First, due to their low performance and their absence, and second, due to the impact they may have as weak work models on other motivating teachers. Third, the advocates of teacher's autonomy in new professional development practices seem to emphasize the fact that school principals and education administrators cannot fully accept the responsibility of teachers’ professional development. However, they need to provide the conditions in which the individual and professional development of the teachers takes place. Therefore, such a model should increase the capacity, willingness and autonomy of teachers toward self-discipline, more control of events and accountability.