The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of secondary school teachers about teacher promotion system, the introduction of master teacher system and its effect. The subjects in this study were 560 teachers who worked at 16 secondary scho...
The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of secondary school teachers about teacher promotion system, the introduction of master teacher system and its effect. The subjects in this study were 560 teachers who worked at 16 secondary schools selected by random sampling from Gyeonggi province. The selected schools included six middle schools and 10 high schools. After a survey was conducted, the answer sheets from 532 teachers were gathered, and 517 answer sheets were analyzed. The questionnaire used in this study was composed of 16 items about teacher promotion system, the introduction of a master teacher system and its effect. For data handling, SPSS(Statistical Package for the Social Science) Win 11.5 program was employed, and x2(Chi-square) test was utilized. Three research questions were posed:
1) What is the outlook of secondary school teachers on the background and necessity of the introduction of a master teacher system?
2) What is the outlook of secondary school teachers on the selection and roles of master teachers and preferential treatment for them?
3) What is the outlook of secondary school teachers on the effect of a master teacher system and possible problems with it?
The introduction of a master teacher system aimed to let teachers devote themselves to teaching wholeheartedly and with pride in pursuit of more excellent expertise. The findings of the study about the master teacher system were as follows:
First, the master teacher system should separately be applied to administration and teaching posts in order to address the needs of teachers who are unsatisfied with the current promotion system. That will enable them to bolster their professionalism and dedicate their lifetime to teaching. And there should close mutual interchange between the administration and teaching divisions after the master teacher system is separately applied.
Second, as for the selection criteria of master teachers, those whose teacher career is 20 years or more should be qualified, and approximately five percent of teachers should be selected as mater teachers in each school. Regarding tenure, master teachers should improve their qualities to be selected again. As to preferential treatment, they should be responsible for about 12 hours of lessons a week, unlike lay teachers who have to give more lessons. Concerning pay, a fixed amount of allowances should be provided to master teachers, and a separate salary class might not be necessary.
Third, in regard to master teacher roles, they should assume the responsibility for teaching and internal instructional supervision. They could contribute to making supervision more practical and field-applicable by setting up a peer supervision model, which is different from supervision models provided by supervisors.
Fourth, one of possible problems with the master teacher system is that there might be severe conflicts between administrators and master teachers, and how to minimize the possible side effect should carefully be considered. As to the effect of the master teacher system, that could make a contribution to bolstering the quality of education and facilitating the growth of education sector by boosting the expertise, pride and moral of teachers.