In view of the rapid decrease in the number of students opting to train as teachers and the
increasing numbers of teachers leaving the profession; the teaching profession in South
Africa is indeed what Duke (1984) termed “imperilled”. While quantitative research
identifies remuneration to be the foremost factor attributed to the dissatisfaction of
teachers in South Africa as elsewhere; the main purpose of this study was to explore
teachers’ perceptions of remuneration. Nine qualified women teachers aged between 25
and 35 years of age, who had been teaching for at least two years and less than ten,
volunteered to take part in this study. The sample was drawn from government schools in
a suburban part of Johannesburg. This research was based on the information gathered
from a short biographical questionnaire followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews.
A process of language sensitive thematic content analysis was employed in order to
analyse the data from the interviews. The research indicates that in the decision to enter
the teaching profession, notions of the perception that teaching is a vocation predominate.
An emphasis on the related intrinsic rewards to be gained from teaching was found to
receive greater focus than monetary concerns on entering the profession. The participants
expressed that women are more likely to enter the teaching profession while even though
men may share the passion to teach, they are seriously deterred by the poor levels of
remuneration. The participants explained that as the contexts of their lives changed, so
too did their perceptions of remuneration, often resulting in an increasing emphasis on the
importance of better remuneration to meet their and their families’ financial needs.
Related to this, it was found that as South African teachers were exposed to an almost
overwhelming number of challenges, the participants began to experience fewer intrinsic
rewards which seemed to impact negatively on their perceptions of remuneration. Thus of
the nine participants, only two indicated their long-term commitment to the teaching
profession whereas the remaining seven all had plans to leave the profession in search of
better remuneration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/6602 |
| Date | 03 March 2009 |
| Creators | Sfetsios, Nefeli |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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