Physics, Chemistry and Biology Teachers’ Reasons for Choosing the Profession of Teaching and Their Levels of Job Satisfaction with Respect to Certain Variables

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine teachers’ reasons for choosing the profession of teaching and their level of job satisfaction and to investigate the effects of certain variables on their job satisfaction. The research data were collected via a questionnaire form to determine the demographic backgrounds of the participants and a Job Satisfaction Scale made up of 32 items in five parts. For the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, t-test and Scheffe test were used. Of all the participants, 34.8% of them preferred to be a teacher just because they wanted to do the profession of teaching; 20.8% of them reported that they incidentally became a teacher; 16.8% of them stated they became a teacher as it was easy to get employed after graduation; and only 0.7% of them believed the salary was satisfactory. The mean score of the participating teachers’ overall responses to the scale was calculated as 66.5, which demonstrated that the teachers had a moderate level of satisfaction with their jobs. Moreover, it was seen that the teachers’ levels of job satisfaction differed significantly with respect to their gender, age and fields of teaching.