Comparing the Attitude of Science Stream and Social Science Stream Secondary School Teachers towards Professionalism

Abstract

Teaching being a multi-faceted and dynamic task requires certain specific competencies along with positive, learner friendly and favorable attitude from its practitioners. A teacher’s effectiveness and proficiency in teaching depends mainly on the attitude he/she possesses for the profession. A positive attitude on the part of teachers is useful to develop a conducive and learning-friendly classroom environment. Attitude being a social construct is influenced by many factors like geographical location, previous teaching experience, teacher’s age, gender and stream of education. This descriptive survey design study was conducted to shed light on the effect of the stream of education (natural science & social science) and gender of the secondary school teachers on their attitude towards teaching profession using a self-developed tool. The study was delimited to a sample of 197 (113 male+84 female) government secondary schools teachers that was selected by using proportionate stratified sampling technique. Collected data were tabulated and analyzed by applying percentage, mean score, standard deviation and t-test statistics. On the whole, it was found that natural science stream teachers showed better attitude towards professionalism than that of social science stream teachers. Overall mean performance depicted positive attitude of all the teachers towards professionalism.