The multi-dimensional examination of the level of professional alienation of the university academic staff (İstanbul province- case study)

As is known, work life represents an important part of human life. Approximately three quarters of the human life is spent at work. For this reason, work is one of the most important, stable and continuous activities in human life. For work to be an ideal place, life outside work must be kept completely away from here. However, a mother in the business environment can be exported by others because of her mandatory tasks of the family. This is a complete counter-example against the rational attitude that you must have at work. As you can see from this, individuals in business life are forced to become one-dimensional, incomplete and alienated to self and others. This is because workers cannot act as freely as desired due to the redefined concept of the business world with the serious increase in the necessary and mandatory responsibilities. And the concept of alienation encounters as a challenge as a result of necessity.Hegel is the first person that rendered the concept of estrangement into a philosophical concept. Alienation in Hegel (1986) includes eliminating itself from within. Alienation is the other asset, awareness and self-awareness is the opposition of subject and object.According to Marx (2007), alienation is an act estranges people to the products of their activity, productive activity itself, the nature they live in, its own nature, to humanity and other people's actions.Instead of approaching alienation in theoretical dimensions, American population scientists led the way to measure the problem of estranged activities in concrete form to the agenda during this period by doing empirical studies. Seeman is the beginning of this research. The works carried out by Seeman has brought enormous contributions to thedefinition and observation of alienation. Seeman has shown individuals the impact of the alienation concept in stages by limiting it (Ekmekçi, 1999; Eltugay, 1999; Hoşgörür, 1997; Tezcan, 1993: Esin, 1982). Seeman?s aim is to examine alienation of an individual that act within the community from the individual's personal perspective. For this purpose, Seeman approached alienation from socio-psychological perspective, and excluded the social conditions from research (Esin, 1982, s.109). Seeman (1959) has shown individuals the impact of the alienation concept in stages by limiting it. In the propation of alienation, Seeman?s classification has been accepted and supported. According to Seeman, alienation has five dimensions. These dimensions are; powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estranegement (Pars, 1982:109). In this study, theory predicts of Melvin Seeman was set as the basis and his classification was used while developing YAYO (The Scale of Yeditepe Academicians Alienation to Vocation).Alienation emerges from work to the employer, working conditions, technological conditions, social and economic purposes of an organization of a society in general, a social phenomenon that affects the individual and is approached carefully regarding political, economic, sociological and psychological type, as well as in organizational and managerial literature. It is observed that alienation has large impacts over schools as an educational institution (Balcı, 2001:86). Education employees in the functioning of educational institutions are loaded with important roles and responsibilities. Teachers play a big role in delivering the objectives of the institution and creating an effective institution. A successful and effective teacher is one of the important ways of delivering the system successfully (Elma, 2003:4). Oğuzkan states that there are three ways of a successful teacher: (a) teacher as the enlightened member of the society, (b) teacher as the vigilant member of the world community and (c) teacher as an adequate member of their work (Oğuzkan 1965, akt: Hesapçıoğlu, 2008).Education institutes are the most functional parts of the education system (Açıkalın, 1998:1). The main function of the education institutes is to make students gain the desired behavior and live the learning life by regulating the environment as required. Because of this, the teachers producing the education service in the education institutes are the essential employees of the education system. Because teachers are the personsproducing the education services (Başaran, 2006:123). Social and economic changes in the education institute require the personnel?s thoughts and behaviors to change (Taymaz, 1997:2). The need to adapt to this change and the objectives of the educational institutions to realize the full importance cannot deny the process of teacher?s estranging to their profession.Alienation towards work emerges from mental disorders (Kornhauser, 1965), dissatisfaction from work, job stress, depression and other psychological disorders at individual level. But on the social and organizational perspective, low productivity, bad morale and moral values, high levels of labor transfer and escape from work (deviate or lapse from work) and diseases or disorders of the many formats, for example, increasing crime rates, the direction of sabotage, health and social security in the cost of increase in business due to slowdown and the strike has been under pressure to get us in the form of an economy (Kanungo, 1992:414). A teacher alienated to her/his career perceives her/his career as a monotonous activity outside of their own and makes their attitudes towards their students negative with the opaque attitudes to lessons that it should be showing in their teaching-learning process (Bayındır, 2002:2). Teacher takes a particular kind of training from "high school" as the social institution. This type and quality of education determines their behavior.Today social organizations are full of people that have no meaning to the organization whatsoever or people take place in organizations that mean nothing to them. This unfortunately does not return to the employer as a profit neither in common cultural purposes nor the partners in business. However, the most important in recent years is the emerging of estranged community with the implementation of the de facto administration with this method, which occurred out of the Postmodernist approach assumed scientifically. When these social organizations, universities and students come, the results occur as a problem. Alienation is a perspective emerged as a result of postmodernism. And the reasons confessed in this perspective must be identified.The overall goal of this research is to determine the level of alienation of teaching staff who work in the Higher Education Council and the State University of Istanbul province. Accordingly, this study will provide benefit to eliminate the cause so the teaching staffconducts more effective and successful work. And at the same time, it will execute a number of findings regarding how to maximize the performance of the teaching staff. The alienation concept will only be eliminated once we learn how to share our common objectives. Scientific research on the alienation will serve this. This research will also contribute to such a crucial goal. There are a number of scientific researches in universities of Turkey regarding the teaching staff estranging towards their profession. This study carries importance as it tries to fill the gaps as there are not many literatures about the alienation of the training staff of the universities of Turkey.Development of the YAYO (The Scale of Yeditepe Academicians Alienation to Vocation)The main objective of this study is to identify the alienation level of the faculty members working in the Foundation and State Universities in the Province of Istanbul that are affiliated to the Higher Education Council. A measuring tool was developed in terms of identifying the alienation level of the faculty members within the frame of this general objective. The research sampling with the participation of a total of 345 faculty members was reached by getting permission from all Foundation and State universities in the province Istanbul. These applications were realized on the first and second reading period of the 2008-2009 academic years.1 survey and 1 scale were used in the research. These are the Vocational Alienation Scale of Yeditepe Academicians (YAYO) developed within the scope of the research which is an information collection form prepared to identify demographic variables of the researcher and the other was to identify the alienation level of the faculty members. Seeman's theoretical explanation was taken to the center theoretically. Scale is designed to fit the five point Likert type model.Literature was scanned, experts were consulted, and the validity and reliability studies of the finalized draft scale were ranked. Internal consistency analysis (Cronbach's Alpha, Guttman, Spearman), the analysis of substance total and remainder substance (item-total, item reminder), factor analysis (KMO, Barttlet; basic components analysis, varimax with Kaiser Normalization), substance distinguish analysis (Discriminity) were composed in this context to perform some analysis. As a result, the academic alienation levels of thefaculty members working in different universities were examined in the context of different demographic variables.As a result of the research findings, scholars (YAYO) meaninglessness sub-dimension scores according to marital status variable (X2 = 6.362, p>, 05), normlessness sub-dimension scores according to age variable (F = 3.293, p <, 05), sense of isolation sub-dimension scores according to the age variable (F = 4.453, p <, 01), self-estrangement sub-dimension scores according to the faculty variables (X2 = 20.940, p <, 05), sense of isolation sub-dimension scores according to the faculty variables (X2 = 6.362 , p>, 05), normlessness sub-dimension scores according to the title variable (X2 = 11.572, p <, 05), sense of isolation sub-dimension scores according to the title variable (X2 = 20.940, p <, 05), sense of isolation sub-dimension scores according to the working hours per week variable (F = 4.453, p <, 01) and the powerlessness sub-dimension scores according to the the working hours per week variable (F = 3.383, p <, 01) were found to show significant differences.Key Words: Alienation, Professional Alienation of the University Academic Staff, the Dimensions of Alienation, Professional Alienation, Estrangement, Scale