A study on autonomy perceptions and expectations of teachers in planning and implementing of teaching

It can be said that teachers are autonomous when they make decisions about educational activities and implement them without the pressure of external supervision. However, the Turkish education system, in which the course objectives and contents are determined by a central authority and the students are evaluated with a central examination, provides teachers with a limited autonomy area in the classroom activities. Studies on teacher autonomy in Turkey have been studied mostly in managerial dimension and the autonomy of teachers in teaching planning and implementation processes have not been studied enough. By examining teachers' perceptions of autonomy in teaching planning and implementation process, it is aimed to present the suggestions to determine the strategies that support teacher autonomy. In this study, the question "What is the teachers' perception of autonomy and needs of autonomy in the planning and implementation process of teaching?" was answered. In this research, sequential explanatory design which is one of the mixed method procedures, was used. Ideal Curriculum Preferences and Curriculum Experiences Questionnaire, Teacher Autonomy Scale and semi-structured interview form were used as data collection tools. 422 teachers working in public and private schools in 2017-2018 academic year were determined by simple random sampling for the quantitative dimension of the study. For qualitative data, 10 teachers with different autonomy perception levels (high, moderate and low levels according to the teacher autonomy scale) were interviewed. In the analysis of quantitative data, percentage, frequency and variance analysis were used; and content analysis technique was used for the analysis of qualitative data. As a result of the study, it was found that the general autonomy perception level of the teachers was above the avarage level. Autonomy perception levels of participants differed significantly according to the variables of age, the school level, professional experience and weekly work load. Yet, autonomy perception levels of the participants did not differ significantly according to the variables of gender, school type, educational status and teaching subject. Teachers' highest perception of autonomy was in teaching planning and implementation dimension, while the lowest perception of autonomy was in professional development dimension. The expectation of teachers from an ideal curriculum is that the curriculum should provide all the steps of the teaching process in detail and at the same time it should give the teachers the right to make changes with flexibility and also provide with adaptation opportunities. The changes made by teachers in the curriculum are; "changing the time", "developing new activities or materials", "changing the order of the content", "superficial teaching" and "skipping subjects". It is revealed that teachers are quite autonomous in decision-making of classroom activities. Teachers expect to have a greater autonomy in determining the content of the curriculum. The participants suggest that the methods to involve teachers to the process of developing a curriculum should be diversified. The participants, who would like to express more opinions through meetings, commitees, online surveys, suggest that the development process of the curriculum should be shaped by the collective work of teachers, experts and pedagogues. Key words: Teacher autonomy, curriculum autonomy, autonomy perception, mixed method