Middle school teachers' perception levels of teacher autonomy

This research aims to reveal middle school teachers' perception levels of teacher autonomy in public and private schools and increase their awareness about the topic. In this direction, teacher autonomy has been examined from various perspectives. Firstly autonomy then teacher autonomy have been researchred academically in the study. Then levels of teachers' self-perceptions of teacher autonomy have been put forward. Quantitative research model has been used in this study. The search has been set measurement by scanning. Theachers working in public and private schools in province İzmir are the population of the study. The sampling of the study has been determined by using cluster sampling that is one of the probability sampling medhods. Data of the study has been collected by total 504 teachers working in 20 public and 13 private schools in central districts of İzmir. "Teacher Autonomy Scale" by Üzüm (2014) has been put to use as scaling tool that validation and reliability control was been checked previously. In the study teachers' perceptions of teacher autonomy have been tried to specify. In the study the difference between teacher's autonomy and teachers' gender, professional seniority, marital status, educational status, branch, union membership has been revealed. In this concext, personal informations have been presented in the first part of the scale, statements in order to reveal perception levels of teachers on teacher autonomy have been used in the second part of it. The results of this study indicates that taechers both public and private middle schools have the high awareness level of teacher autonomy. However teachers in private middle schools have higher awareness level than teachers in public middle schools. Teachers' autonomy perception in technical and psychological autonomy is high level but in political autonomy is middle level. In this study results reveals that there aren't any significant difference related to teachers' gender, seniority, marital status, educational status, branch and union membership status.