Exploring Experiences of Two Hourly-Paid Teachers at Public Schools: A Narrative – Biographical Study
Author:
Abstract
Keywords
Abstract
In Turkey, employing hourly-paid teachers under precarious conditions has been adopted by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) to solve teacher shortage at public schools for a long time. However, this type of employment involves challenges and disadvantages for hourly-paid teachers. The literature includes various studies and findings regarding to hourly-paid teacher employment and the status of teachers. Although the issue of hourly-paid teaching was examined in depth by adopting qualitative approaches, it was not addressed using the narrative approach with the participation of individuals with long-term hourly-paid teaching experience. Current study aims to narrate the experiences of hourly- paid teachers teaching at the public elementary schools for 15-20 years. Narrative Biographical Approach was operated in the study to reveal how two hourly- paid teachers serving at the elementary level at the two separate public schools comprised their life stories regarding hourly- paid teaching. To obtain participants of the study, researchers employed snowball sampling which is one of purposeful sampling techniques managed in the qualitative studies. As the researchers intended to relate past and the present to reconstitute the life stories of the participants, Biographical Narrative Interview (BNI) method operated during the interviews to collect data in the study. To achieve interpretation of the obtained data and define how reality is formed by each participant, narrative analysis was executed. Findings of the study revealed that choose of the hourly-paid teaching is a result of unemployment and economic conditions. During hourly-paid teaching, teachers experience social, economic, psychological and professional challenges such as discrimination, salary deduction, drudgery, personal rights restrictions. The study clearly presented that despite the challenges experienced, inner and altruistic motivation are the key instruments to conduct the hourly-paid teaching