The aim of this study was to analyze the meanings of the experiences that male directors had in the process of operating the child educational institution. This study helped to understand how the male directors manage the educational institution, and ...
The aim of this study was to analyze the meanings of the experiences that male directors had in the process of operating the child educational institution. This study helped to understand how the male directors manage the educational institution, and to understand difficulties, joys, and hope of male directors.
To achieve these aims, specific research questions were determined as following:
1. What kinds of difficulties do the male directors of child educational institutions feel?
2. What kinds of joys do the male directors of child educational institutions feel?
3. What kinds of hope do the male directors of child educational institutions feel?
The research results are summarized into three main categories : difficulties, joys, and hope of male directors.
First, male directors felt difficulties in forming and maintaining intimate relationship with teachers. These difficulties were related to male directors' words and actions causing misunderstanding and to men's lack of understanding about the female-centered culture. Second, male directors felt difficulties in forming good relationship with parents. This was based on the misconception that jobs in child education were only for women. Also this was due to the burden of the directors that director and parents relationship might appear to be woman and man relationship. Third, any physical contact to children could be suspected and it brought a feeling of difficulties to male directors. In fact, one male director reported that he was nearly about to leave the position because of misunderstanding about his physical contact to children. Fourth, male directors felt difficulties in guiding teachers and operating curriculum due to a lack of professional knowledge. This is normally related to the background of male directors. Normally male directors' academic subjects were not child education and they had less experiences as teachers in education field. Fifth, male directors felt burden of safety. This psychological burden was related to the heavy pressure that all responsibilities were on the shoulder of directors and that some parents demanded excessive compensation and showed excessive reprimands. Sixth, male directors felt difficulties in recruiting children which had a direct impact on the institutional survival. The reasons were low fertility rate but growing number of child educational institutions. The proliferation of child educational institutions caused highly competitive structure. This fierce competitive atmosphere made male directors accept parents' excessive demands. So it interfered normal education and created abnormal situation in which various special subjects including English were preferred.
Next, out of difficulties, male directors felt joy in the process of operating educational institutions. First, male directors felt joys in being with children itself, so they were happy with their job. They felt joys in seeing children who liked them and in keeping relationship with parents even after graduation. Second, male directors felt happy when teachers upgraded their qualifications and developed themselves, and teachers expressed their satisfaction to directors. Third, male directors felt joys when parents showed their trust in institutions. If parents changed their negative perception of male directors into positive one and support male directors, they felt joy.
Finally, male directors told their hope in the process of operating educational institutions. First, as said above, male directors felt heavy pressure in their position and responsibilities. So they hoped not to have any accident and hoped to have peaceful routin days. Second, male directors normally played a role of troubleshooter in the management of facilities. Male directors had strengths in this area compared to female directors. Also, the fact that they played a role of father to children was positive. As the importance of father grew, they expected that the role of male directors would grow. Third, male directors hope to play an important role in leading the governmental support for the child care educational environment and to contribute for the continual development of child education. In the process of decision-making to improve the quality of child education environment, they hope to use their various social experiences and wider human networking.