Views of classroom teachers about their organizational commitment and their empowerment

Competition and change attempts in the information society throughout globalization both have caused social, political and economical transformation in society and have created structural transformation in organizations. At this process, employees? integration with organization, their adopting the organization and quality and productivity concepts have importance. In addition to this, ommitment and empowerment have come into prominence within primary schools in the education system as well as all organizations. The reason is that primary education system has had more schools, students and teachers quantitatively compared to the other grades.The aim of this study is to figure out the perceptions of the state primary school teachers on organizational commitment (compliance, identification and internalization) and teacher empowerment (decision making, impact, professional development, status, self efficacy and autonomy) with their subdimensions. In this sense, qualitative research method was employed in the present study. Descriptive analysis was used and the data was gathered through semi-structured interview technique. The application of the study was held in 8 primary schools in Eskişehir during the spring semester of 2008-2009 academic year. Participants of the study are 22 classroom teachers. The data of the study were gathered between 12 February 2009 and 24 February 2009 in certain rooms of the school in the convenient time of the teachers. Pilot study was held with one classroom teacher and then the questions were arranged again according to the answers of that teacher. ?Semi-Structured Interview Form? and ?Teacher Demographic Information Form? developed by the researcher was used as the data gathering instruments. The data were analyzed and then the findings were defined and interpreted with respect to the research questions.Findings of the study revealed that the most expressed views about compliance dimension are that file and paper works are done compulsory and they are thought to be unnecessary. It was seen about identification dimension that nearly half of the classroom teachers expressed ideas about identifying themselves with their schools and that four of these teachers did everything related to their professions eagerly. Two teachers said that working in their schools and the working condition which the school principal constructed made them happy and that they were feeling themselves lucky since they were working in their schools. These views pointed out a commitment at the internalization dimension.While most of the teachers had views at the compliance dimension, some of the teachers had views at the identification dimension and two of them had views at the internalization dimension, it was seen that commitment is to their professions in general, not to the school. Another finding is that all of the teachers stressing fair, supporting, reliable and moderate attitude of school principal cited positive opinion about organizational commitment.In the research, almost all the teachers pointed out positive opinion about teachers? participation in decision making process while some of them stated that they may sometimes have obstacles in the applications of the decisions because of the factors outside of the initiative of school administration. Moreover, nearly all the teachers cited opinion about that quality and productivity levels of activities which are done for teachers? professional development are narrow and that both activity contents and the educators within the in-service training programmes have to be improved. Regarding teacher freedom at school which refers to autonomy, while five teachers expressed that they feel completely free in the educational and instructional activities within the classroom except choosing course books, five teachers declared that school principals do not interfere with the teachers? own duties and activities and four of the teachers thought themselves independent within the framework of law and legislations.All of the teachers participating in the research indicated some views about their status. These views are that teaching is a profession which has high moral satisfaction about status (12), that they have close relations with their colleagues (7), that teachers see themselves prestigious in terms of principal, students and parents (5) and that they think status is prominent and they perform their professions fondly (3). Furthermore, all of the teachers pointed out some views related to problems in being able to show teachers? self-efficacy. These views about problems are low socio-economic status of the school and the students (12) and shortage of instructional materials and low technological resources (11). As for powerful sides in being able to show self-efficacy, seven teachers in paying attention to individual differences, six teachers in all professional efficacies and four teachers school-family cooperation view themselves effective.In the study, the most expressed organizational commitment subdimension is compliance. Moreover it was seen that teachers? commitment is to their professions, not to their schools they are in. Also the positive attitudes of school principals were seen to increase the organizational commitment of the teachers. Furthermore, the level of having the opportunity to develop themselves professionally was found to contribute to their motivation and commitment. It was seen in the study that teachers? trust about their effectiveness in decison-making and being able to show their self-efficacy increased the level of organizational commitment. There are not any teachers committed to the organization termlessly, but opportunities of the school in terms of empowerment have great effect on the level of commitment.