유치원 및 어린이집 교사의 직업행복감 증진 방안

Abstract

In this study, preschool and daycare teachers’ career happiness is elaborated into different domains and their components are further analyzed. The purpose of the study is to suggest policy plans that can increase the level of career happiness. To perform these tasks, the study first conducted a preliminary investigation with 300 preschool and daycare teachers. Then we investigated 1,543 preschool and daycare teachers to ask about what can boost their career happiness. The qualitative data were also collected 10 times(1-2 times per week) from 9 preschool teachers and 14 daycare teachers(8 from toddler class and 6 from kindergarten class) for two-months period based on daily reconstruction method. These are the following results. The survey demonstrates that 99% of the teachers are women, 36.2% of them are in their 20’s. 11% has less than 2 years of work experience, 23.6% has 2-5 years of work experience, 30.7% has more than 10 years of work experience. 43.3% of them graduated from a community college. The average total working hours is 8.8 hours, but real working hours are found to be average of 9.5 hours, which shows that most teachers are overworked. Preschool teachers and daycare teachers from toddler and kindergarten class reported relatively high scores in their relationship with their colleagues and young children. Daycare teachers from toddler class reported the highest average scores in the following 4 domains. In general the average score of each question in Working environment domain was lower than the total average score in Relationship domain. The average score for the questions from Career Awareness domain which asked about the teachers’ opinions on their job was 3.8 and was quite high. When looking at teacher’s feelings about their jobs for the past 2 weeks, we found that the average score of positive feelings was 3.5 and the average score of negative feelings was 2.7. 68.6% of them reported that Work Environment domain needs improvements to enhance career happiness; 18.7% of them reported that Relationship domain needs improvements; 9.1% reported that Psychological·Emotional domain needs improvements; 3.4% reported that Career Awareness domain needs improvements. Then the study conducted more analysis in order to deduce the Career Happiness index. According to the final version of the Career Happiness index, to effectively enhance the career happiness of preschool and daycare teachers there needs to be changes in ‘Work environment’ and ‘Career Awareness’ domain. The result of case studies based on daily reconstruction method indicated the average happiness of teachers during their daily schedule. The highest level of happiness was reached during the morning activities, then the next highest level was reached when the work begins in the morning, then when children come to preschool or daycare center, and then during the afternoon activities. On the other hand, the lowest level of happiness was reached during afternoon working hours. The level of happiness was relatively low during lunch hours and during children’s pick up time. It possible to suggest some ways to enhance career happiness of preschool and daycare teachers. First, to improve the overall Relationship domain scores of preschool and daycare teachers, it is significant to figure out the ways to develop leadership programs for colleagues and the director, parent education programs that can increase respect for teacher, and special consulting or therapy programs for teachers. To improve Work Environment domain scores, it is significant to redetermine teacher’s working hours and to assign more teachers to a class. It is also important to overhaul the current payment system to raise teachers’ salaries, to define the physical space standards not only for young children but also for teachers, to rearrange work environment for more safety, to offer more group activities and to provide information on teacher’s welfare. To improve Emotional domain scores, it is necessary to offer teachers with different work experiences more opportunities to develop emotional competence, and to allow a sufficient break for teachers to regulate their negative emotions. Lastly, to improve Career Awareness domain scores, it is necessary to launch a countrywide awareness campaign promoting the value of the teachers, to make adjustments to teachers’ work requirements, to implement and expand a system of sabbatical leave for teachers, and to adopt the code of ethics for teachers, parents and the head of each centers. At last, this study suggested the Career Happiness Index for teachers and created personal profiles based on the distribution of the total calculated score(T score) to associate them with teacher’s education.