Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15516/cje.v27i4.6593
The Prestige of the Teaching Profession and Measures for its Improvement
Andreja Kozmus
orcid.org/0000-0001-9397-133X
; University of Maribor, Faculty of Arts
*
Mateja Pšunder
; University of Maribor, Faculty of Arts
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The prestige of the teaching profession in society significantly affects teachers’
motivation to teach, their professionalism, student achievement, desirability
of the profession among young people, and the overall progress of civilization.
Slovenia is currently experiencing a significant shortage of teachers, which may
be attributed also to the low prestige of the teaching profession. Accordingly, we
were interested in ascertaining teachers’ views and identifying opportunities for
raising the prestige of the teaching profession in society.
In the empirical part, we present the results of a study conducted with on a
random sample of 870 Slovenian primary and secondary school teachers.
According to the results, teachers attributed high prestige to teachers at upper
and secondary levels, but not to teachers in primary schools. They were most
likely to agree with the general public’s view that the teaching profession has a
higher reputation in other EU countries than in Slovenia and that teaching is
publicly regarded as important for society. However, they did not agree that this
profession has a high or growing reputation. The highest-rated measures that
they believed would improve the reputation of the teaching profession relate to
macro-level measures at the national level (support from the government and the
relevant ministry, reduction of bureaucratic work, appropriate and comparable
financial assessment of work with other professions and maintaining good public
education). There were some statistically significant differences between the
responses of primary and secondary school teachers.
Keywords
education; primary school; Slovenia; teachers; upper secondary school
Hrčak ID:
346046
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2025.
Visits: 309 *