BUREAUCRATIC ORIENTATIONS, AUTONOMY AND THE PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDES OF TEACHERS

Studies which hate examined relations between the organizational orientations of professionals, who work in bureaucracies, and measures of professionalism hate produced inconsistent and inconclusive findings. The results remain equivocal partly because restricted statistical techniques have been used and because studies have failed to differentiate between the structural and attitudinal components of professionalism. In the present study regression surface analysis was used to investigate relations between the bureaucratic orientations of 230 secondary school teachers and their professional attitudes at different levels of autonomy. The Jackknife technique was used to adjust the significance levels in the analysis. Bureaucratic orientations and autonomy had significant linear and curvilinear relations with attitude measures of ideal of service and dedication to teaching. Although the regression surfaces differed between female and male teachers, they showed that at each level of bureaucratic orientation increases in professional attitudes were associated with increases in the amount of autonomy allowed teachers. That is, bureaucratic orientations and the professional attitudes of teachers need not be in conflict if schools increase the autonomy allowed teachers.