Determination of the causes of the teacher absenteeism

The aim of this research is to determine the causes of teacher absenteeism according to the perceptions of the teachers and determine whether the causes of teacher absenteeism show significant difference in terms of the variables of gender, marital status, age, seniority, instructional level taught, branch and monthly income level of the family. In this research, the causal comparative research model was used as the quantitative research method. In 2017-2018 education year, in the province of Burdur, the research was conducted with the participation of 380 teachers who were selected with the method of convenience sampling. Personal information form and "The Causes of Teacher Absenteeism Scale" were used as data collection tool in the research. Analysis of the data which were obtained was done with SPSS 21 program. It was seen that the data were distributed normally in the examinations which were made. For this reason, in the analysis of the data, independent samples t- Test and one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) which were parametric tests and descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage and mean were used. According to the results of analysis which was done, the causes of teacher absenteeism didn't show significant difference in terms of the variables of gender, marital status, age, seniority, instructional level taught, branch and monthly income level of the family. Also, in general teachers' perception levels of the causes of absenteeism (X̅=2, 74) were moderate. Teachers' perception levels of causes of absenteeism in the internal dimension (X̅= 2, 82) and in the external dimension (X̅= 2, 67) were moderate. The item which teachers expressed the most frequently as the cause of absenteeism was that "I don't want to go to school when I don't feel safe at school" (X̅=3, 19). The item which teachers expressed the least frequently as the cause of absenteeism was that "Being impatient increases absenteeism" (X̅=3, 19). According to the descriptive statistical results, 52,9 % of the teachers receive 1-5 days leave/ report per year. 51, 1% of the teachers think that the responsibility for raising children lead to absenteeism. 84, 2% of the teachers think that the illness of one of the family (child, spouse, mother, father and sibling) causes absenteeism. 73, 9 % of the teachers think that their child's ilness is the most important factor which affects absenteeism.