Public Opinion And Teachers' View On Education Issues

Author(s):

Chantal Oggenfuss(presenting / submitting)Stefan Wolter

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 04 D, Policy Reforms and Teacher Professionalism (Part 3)

Paper Session: continued from 23 SES 02 D, 23 SES 03 D

Time:

2014-09-03

09:00-10:30

Room:

B336 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Martha Lucchesi

Contribution

Public opinion and teachers' view on education issues

In many European countries education issues and education policies are disputed and controversially discussed by policy makers. And in democratic societies – Switzerland in our case – the policy preferences of citizens matter. Therefore the study of education policy preferences is important from a theoretical as well as from an empirical perspective. Most of the international literature about implementation research in education emphasises repeatedly that the role of teachers and teachers’ belief are crucial for success in innovation at school and in implementing education policies. However the scholarly interest focuses on implementation strategies and policies, neglecting the analysis of micro-level foundations of individual preferences. This current study aims to identify the preferences of teachers towards different education issues that are relevant for education reforms and policies. Two original data set from two different surveys carried out in Switzerland in 2007 and 2012 provide answers to a variety of educational policy issues as well as detailed sociodemographic information about the respondents in order to explore the dynamics of education policy preferences.

The analysis focuses on issues which very likely matter to teachers in the context of their work or which affect their working conditions in a direct way. Compared to previous European and international studies the available data set allows to contrast preferences concerning education issues between qualified teachers and a representative sample of the remaining Swiss population.

One possible explanation for the difference of preferences could be found in the theoretical idea of teachers as education and schooling experts which possibly implicates that teachers think differently from other people about topics related to education and school reforms because they possess more information. Another attempt to explain the difference in preferences is to use an extension of the classical insider-outsider theory. While the theory as originally formulated, explains wage rigidity and unemployment we adapt it to our analysis to non-monetary aspects – more precisely to the working conditions. This leads to the assumption that insider, in our case teachers, might not be indifferent regarding education issues if these affect their working conditions.

Findings suggest that qualified teachers have a distinctly higher aversion to changes that could affect their working conditions or their context of work in a very immediate way. Whereas no differences are observed when looking at issues that are not likely to be relevant for the working conditions or the context of work of teachers.

Comparing the preferences of qualified teachers with the preferences of other people, due to the sample regarded as the remaining Swiss population, it seems that teachers form a particular interest group. As the teacher union can draw media attention to their concerns more effectively than a non-organised group of citizens, it could be relevant for the education policy discourse to be conscious, that teachers could be pursuing self-interests.

Method

In order to explore the dynamics of education policy preferences and to analyse the preferences of teachers towards education issues that affect their working conditions we use data sets from two surveys conducted in Switzerland, one in 2007 and another in 2012. The sample from 2007 contains information on 2,025 Swiss citizens over the age of 25. The one from 2012 contains information on the Swiss residential population from the age of 18 up. For the purposes of comparison foreigners are excluded from the 2012 data. Both samples were selected randomly. The data were collected using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing. Apart from individual socioeconomic and family characteristics, respondents were asked to express their opinion on a series of questions concerning education and educational financing. To be sure that the reason for the differences in preferences between qualified teachers and the remaining Swiss citizens does not lie in differences in the characteristics of the two groups we compare first the two subsamples (qualified teachers and others). Furthermore, we also include a control question on the individual’s general satisfaction with the quality of the education system. The main analysis focuses on two sets of items: the first set includes topics which very likely matter for teachers in the context of their work or which affect their working conditions directly (opinion on increase of educational expenditures, on private or public school choice or on student assessments). The second set includes questions concerning issues that are not likely to be relevant to the working conditions or the context of work of teachers (high school graduation rate, child care through family or relatives versus external child care). We estimate different regression models to analyse teachers’ preferences using a full set of variables. The main control variables, apart from education, income and political affiliation are age, gender, language region, school-age children (whether the respondent has children in school), and residence (whether the respondent lives in a city, an agglomeration, or a rural area).

Expected Outcomes

Empirical findings as well as the theoretical considerations suggest that qualified teachers have a distinctly higher aversion to issues that could affect their working conditions negatively in a very immediate way such as increasing the competition by school choice. Additionally qualified teachers have a higher tendency to decline standardised tests compared to others. Not surprisingly qualified teachers favour more the improvement of their working conditions by increasing expenditure on primary and secondary school education. Whereas no differences were observed when looking at issues that are not likely relevant to the working conditions or the context of work of teachers. The results also show that for the majority of the examined issues characteristics as sex, political affiliation and language region have a significant effect. Although qualified teachers are different from others with respect to exactly these characteristics, the difference in preferences regarding issues that very likely matter to teachers were present even after controlling for these variables. Concerning the relevance of professional knowledge of teachers about education as an explanation for the difference in opinions we cannot come to a clear conclusion.

References

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Author Information

Chantal Oggenfuss (presenting / submitting)

SKBF

Aarau

Stefan Wolter

Swiss Coordination Centre for Research in Education

Managment