Teachers’ Perceptions of their Profession’s Prestige

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the problem of teaching jobs’ popularity and prestige, which are said to be decreasing in the world, which, in turn, can bring about a disastrous decrease in education levels worldwide. The goal of the article was to investigate the issue from the teachers’ perspective. An online teacher survey was conducted with 383 respondents from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq (as developing/oriental countries) and the USA/Canada (as developed, Western countries). During two months, the questionnaire was available online, and its links were shared with the professional community. Conclusions were made that teachers’ views on the prestige/popularity of their profession are average (the obtained means were mostly between 3 and 4 on a 5-point Likert scale). The need for the improvement of job’ safety and security, working conditions, teacher autonomy, decreasing their overload, stress and burnout, and increasing salaries and professional and financial support was emphasised.