This study intended to focus on helping make efficient activation of the master teacher system by analyzing elementary school teachers' perception and satisfaction with master teachers and problems of failure in activation and suggesting a plan for se...
This study intended to focus on helping make efficient activation of the master teacher system by analyzing elementary school teachers' perception and satisfaction with master teachers and problems of failure in activation and suggesting a plan for settling the system in elementary schools on the basis of the report by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology that as many as 2000 master teachers are expected to be selected in 2011 and the number of them will be increased by 10% each year afterward while the system which has been operated demonstratively in unit schools for three years fails to be activated and wanted ads are run because of the insufficient number of applicants.
To do this, specific questions were set as follows:
First, how do elementary teachers perceive the master teacher system in elementary schools?
Second, what factors prevent the master teacher system from being activated in elementary schools?
Third, what is the incentive for making a competent teacher a master teacher and the plan for operating the master teacher system efficiently in elementary schools as a scheme for settling the master teacher system successfully?
To answer these questions, questionnaires were made on the basis of literature and data about the current master teacher system and distributed to 20 elementary schools in Gangwon Province and the northern part of Gyeonggi Province to conduct a survey.
The results of the survey can be summarized as follows:
First, the majority of elementary school teachers recognized the need of the master teacher system but had a poor understanding of the system. This is probably not only because of insufficient PRs regarding the master teacher system but also because the system is hardly attractive to teachers. To induce a competent teacher to become a master teacher, therefore, it is necessary to give attractive incentives suitable to supervision and management and develop activities for attracting competent teachers, for example, through PRs.
Second, more teachers indicated that a master teacher could become an attractive position enough to relieve the desire for promotion to the management if the current master teacher system might be improved drastically, thus suggesting revision of the system.
Third, it is necessary to set a clear role and give priority to treatment of master teachers in order to operate the master teacher system properly in elementary schools. There is high possibility of failure to attract competent teachers if master teachers are poorly treated with their role set improperly.
Fourth, to attract competent teachers and activate the master teacher system, it is necessary to carefully consider interchange between the teaching staff and the management, make thoughtful selection by separating the teaching system from the management system but considering weak and strong points of assignment of master teachers to positions of principal and vice-principal, and select right ones who can contribute to improvement in expertise, roles as an assistant of colleagues, and learning organization of schools.
Personal, material, and institutional support systems need to be accompanied to operate the master teacher system efficiently in school practice.
For master teachers to reinforce their capabilities, it is necessary to set a clear role, reduce the number of classes, give financial support for research activities, secure manpower to supplement classes, and give realistic types of administrative support. This is to efficiently perform such key functions of master teaches as class-assisting activities, including class coaching, field research, development and distribution of curricular and teaching-learning evaluation methods, leadership in internal training, and instruction for newly appointed teachers in stable atmosphere.
The possibility of hierarchy among titles needs to be considered since the master teacher system can lead to establishment of new titles. It is also necessary to consider the fact that the system can not only cause a conflict among the principal, the vice-principal, and appointed teachers but also make teachers staying in the teaching staff alone incompetent, thus destroying their morale, and take measures to develop the system harmoniously in order to settle it in school practice.