Professional Commitment of Teachers

Contents: Preface. 1. Teacher commitment: the problem and its context. 2. Research trends in teacher commitment. 3. Social and academic characteristics and teacher commitment. 4. Analysis of data. 5. Discussion and interpretation. 6. Conclusions and suggestions. Bibliography. Index.

"Teaching is considered as one of the oldest profession as well as a Nobel profession. Every teacher is expected to be an ideal man imbued with a high moral character. Professionally he is supposed to have rapport with all concerned with his profession. Hence he is expected to be committed to his profession, to learner, to society, and to high human values. If quality education is the goal, it can not be achieved without the sincere efforts of dedicated and committed teacher. It is the committed teacher, who can inculcate values, nurture values and help students to internalise values. Thus, it is the committed teachers that can make the Indian education system survive.

Unfortunately, however, the teachers have fallen victim to a popular criticism in regard to their professional commitment. In popular media it is complaint that the missionary character of their profession is slowly eroding. But however this is true? No body seems to have an empirical answer. Amrita Maheshwari has done a pioneer research work on the theme of Teacher\'s Commitment in secondary education in India.

She has tried to gauge the extent, variation and distribution of professional commitment among teachers in secondary education and has tried to compare the degree of commitment among teachers with their social and academic characteristics. She has also tried to explore the ways and means of fostering commitment among teachers.

The situation of teachers\' commitment has been dealt with a broader perspective of prevalent theoretical models and paradigms related to it. Amrita Maheshwari concludes by offering interesting and instructing results regarding teachers\' professional commitment.

Her work is so wide in it coverage that it is bound to be used as reference manual by fulfill researchers in the field of commitment-research in education." (jacket)