The precarization of educational labour: The examination of teachers' job insecurity perceptions

In this study, the precarization of educational labour was identified in terms of teachers' job insecurity perceptions. The purpose of the study was to examine the job insecurity perceptions of teachers who were employed under permanent, fixed-term, or temporary contracts. Case study design was used in the study. The data of the study were collected in two steps. Firstly, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 teachers, under permanent, fixed term, or temporary contracts and working in Mugla or Mardin. Secondly, the data were collected through the administration of Teachers' Job Insecurity Scale, developed within the scope of this study, to the public school teachers working in the province of Mugla in 2020-2021 educational year. The sample of the study consisted of 432 permanent teachers specified using disproportionate cluster sampling technique. The data obtained through the interviews were analysed by thematic analysis. Descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Sidak test, and clustering analysis were used for the analysis of the data acquired through Teachers' Job Insecurity Scale. The results of the study reveal that the participants perceive intense explicit and implicit job insecurity. Clustering analyses show that 69% of the participants perceive moderate and high levels of both explicit and implicit job insecurity, whereas 73% of the participants perceive moderate and high levels of general job insecurity. Job insecurity has crucial negative effects on teachers socially and psychologically which naturally reflected on the quality of education. According to the teachers' views, job insecurity has both social effects such as a silence culture, a lack of solidarity, discrimination, pressure and oppression and psychological effects such as unhappiness, loneliness, fear, despair and suicide on teachers. This situation could also have negative effects on their teaching process, the performance, and students. Justification of insecurity, instrumental use of power against job insecurity, acquiescence of job insecurity, and acceptance of job insecurity cause structuration of job insecurity. Regarding demographic variables, the teachers with 21 years or more seniority have higher perceptions of explicit job insecurity than the teachers with 11 to 20 years of seniority. Additionally, implicit and general job insecurity perceptions of the single teachers have been found to be higher than that of the married teachers. Keywords: precarization, job insecurity, educational labour, teacher