Teachers' perception about the effects of unions on school life and the reasons of educators not to be members of the unions

The aim of this study is to determine primary school teachers? perceptions about the effects of unions on school life and to determine the teachers? who are not the member of unions reasons for not being the member of unions. The population of the study was formed by primary school administrators and teachers (n=919) working at public primary schools (n=24) located in the city center and provinces of Bolu in 2010-2011 academic year. In the study no sampling was used and it was tried to the researcher tried to reach the whole population. As of the date of the study, the data collection instrument was given to 919 primary school teachers and administrators. Distributed data collection instruments back in 365, 360 returning data collection instruments were evaluated. In the study correlational survey method was used to determine if teachers? perceptions about the effects of being a member to the unions change according to their genders, branches, ages, years of experience and their education levels or not and to determine if teachers? perceptions about their reasons for not to be the member of education unions change according to their genders, ages, branches, years of experience, marital status, duties in schools, being a member of a union, being aware of union, and their education levels or not. In the study a data collection instrument has four parts was used. SPSS statistical program was used for the analysis of the data collected. To analyze the data collected, frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation scores were calculated for independent variables. To test the differences between two variables, independent samples t-test and to test the differences more than two variables, one-way ANOVA were used. Chi-Square Test is applied to test the meaningful difference between two classification variances. Significance level is accepted p< 0,05. By the end of the study, it is ascertained by the participants that unions? opinions should be regarded in determining the education policies, it is believed that education unions are useful in the development of democracy while they think unions are not sufficient in Professional development and inservices training activities and in development of teachers? personel rights, the unions? political and ideological affairs hinder the participants to be a member of the unions and education unions use wrong strategies. A significant difference in non-union members teachers? perceptions on the effects of unions on school life was found according to their gender, branch, age and years of experience variables. Also a significant difference in union member teachers? perceptions on the effects of unions on school life was found according to their gender, ages, education and years of experience variable. However, no significant differnce was found in any item according to the branch variable. It is found that there are reasons for not being member to a union due to the problems derived from unions and social problems. Differences were observed in teachers? perceptions about not being a member of a union in teachers? dimension and significant differences were found in gender, marital status and membership of union and years of experience variables. A significant difference was found in problems derived from unions and social problems dimentions according to being acquainted with unions. No significant differences were found in teachers? perceptions about not being a member of unions according to their branches and the duties at school. Key words: Teacher, Union, Union Movements, Education Union, Union Membership