Abstract:

Maturity of emotional reaction of the pupil in the educational process, and later on in his interpersonal life, has its source, among other things, in the teacher’s actions consisting in intentional maintenance of a relation oriented towards reciprocity. Therefore, the initial stage of any educational activities undertaken by pedagogical staff, with which one should commence the process of education, is establishing a positive emotional relationship with the pupil.

The main goal of this study is to examine the degree to which pedagogical staff is involved in the educational process, and by the same token in the pupil’s affairs, and on this basis, to establish a model of school staff engagement. More specifically, the study aims at determining the intensity and the correlation between particular points on the pedagogical staff engagement scale as well as at identifying statistically significant differences between mean results obtained for particular groups of pedagogical personnel (teachers, pedagogues, psychologists).

The questions in the questionnaire, which provide the organizational structure of the present paper, form an importance hierarchy, ranging from the level of the pedagogue’s heroism to the level of instrumental treatment of the pupil. On top of this hierarchy there is Q1–heroic engagement, then Q2–professional engagement, Q3–multidirectional engagement, Q3–engagement without additional costs, Q4–engagement when there is no conflict, Q5–engagement oriented towards oneself, whereas at the bottom of the hierarchy there is Q6–instrumental engagement.

The responses of pedagogical staff concerning the degree of acceptance of particular aspects of engagement in the educational process did not differ significantly from one another. There were areas of concentration of certain responses, for instance in the case of question Q2 and PQ3 the answers were accumulated around higher levels of approval in relation to the central point of the scale. Question Q4 did not provide clear points of preference because the respondents’ answers to this question were evenly distributed across each point of the scale. The responses to questions Q1, Q5, Q6 and Q7 concentrated around a lower score of selected options. The analysis of the results revealed statistically significant differences in the case of two scales, Q2 and Q6.

It may be concluded that pedagogical personnel clearly rejects the practice of using the pupil to meet their own ends but at the same time they do not want to engage in reciprocal relations with the pupil. In situations of being harmed, the pupil is treated as the subject of interventions while in the process of everyday relations, he is perceived as an object of interactions which pedagogical staff is obliged to deal with due to the character of their profession. Moreover, the study shows that the educational process should take place without excessive sacrifice and engagement of the pedagogical staff as well as without the engagement of external entities. Pedagogical staff are only willing to join such external initiatives which unequivocally bring benefit to the pupil. In such circumstances they would readily devote their own time and effort, but only within the scope of duties defined by their profession.

Keywords:

Engagement, educational process, pedagogical staff.