Abstract:

The studies conducted in the related literature show that female teachers outnumber the males in pre-school and primary school education especially in developed countries. In other words, female teachers prefer dealing with much younger children while male teachers prefer dealing with teenagers. Without any doubt it also occurs to be possible to say that the roles attributed to females and males by the society have influence on this preference. When the number of male and female teachers and their distribution to schools are examined, it is observed that the number of female teachers in preschool education is greater than that of male teachers. For instance, there were 23.594 female teachers but 1.181 male teachers at preschools; 209.366 male teachers and 193.463 female teachers at elementary schools, 110.187 male and 193.463 female teachers at secondary school in 2006-2007 academic year. These rates are as follows during 2009-2010 academic year: It was viewed that there were 2.069 male and 40.647 female teaches at pre-schools, 716.419 male and 681.019 female teachers at elementary schools, and 3.006 male and 2.998 female teachers at secondary schools. The aim of this research is to present the factors which affect the demand for preschool teaching within the context of perception of roles regarding social gender.

As the research aims at describing the present situation, it is a research of scan type and was planned to be a qualitative study. The data of the study were obtained via a work group which was established conforming to “easy sampling technique” emerging in qualitative research tradition. For this aim, a work group was formed with male and female students being educated at the Head Department of Preschool Teaching at the Department of Primary School Teaching, Faculty of Education, Kastamonu University. The research data were obtained with semi-structured interview technique.

Among the factors which affect students’ becoming preschool teachers, the ones such as the fact that students love children, they will be employed easily and the scores of this department are much lower become prominent. There is no differentiation in the gender of students regarding this issue. While female students generally stated they chose preschool teaching since they love this job, male students generally mentioned that they chose it since they would begin performing their jobs immediately after graduation.

Families and close friends of these students think the profession of preschool teaching is not appropriate for males. Nevertheless, a change in their perceptions is also a matter of fact as time passes by. While female students do not face with any difficulties when they go to application schools for observations and training, male students stated that some parents regard their situations a bit strange.

Should the students make a selection again, they still choose preschool teaching. On this issue, there is a slight difference in male students’ views. All female students stated they would perform their own professions again. As for the males, they think of being transferred to administration positions after commencing their professions or opening their own institutions after working at public schools for a short period of time.

Keywords:

Teaching profession, demand for education, social gender, preschool teaching.