Professional Social Support Levels That Physical Education Teachers Perceive in Educational Institutions in Turkey

Abstract

IntroductionWorking conditions and social support given from organization have a significant impact on employees for working for a long time. Confidence of employees to their jobs is related to the things that they live. Autonomy of employees in the organization affects the level of social suport perceived by employees (Eisenbergerand etc., 1999: 1026-1040).While the concept of social support had been a defined and measured concept until the 1980s, the concept of organizational support has been a topic of discussion for nearly 70 years (Zagenczyk, 2006: 8). Social support can be defined as a perception that is related to supporting level of behaviors of individuals provided by social networks like school, close-friend, classmates, teacher, father and mother for increasing functions of individuals and/or providing a buffer zone against negative consequences (House & Kahn, 1985: 83, 108; Malecki & Demaray, 2006: 375-395). It is also regarded as social and psyhchological support (Yildirim, 1997: 81-87) that an individual gets from his/her environment. Social support can be said to be indispensable because it helps people to dissolve their problems, helps people to reduce stress, helps people to adopt to environment and make people to feel better psychologically.Social support is the primary determinant of one's own characteristic. A family member can perceive all of other family members as a supporter or an obstacle. The second determinant of the perceived support is the person whom support taken from. The person who provides social support doesn't get as much attention as the person who perceives social support in the literature. However, perceptions of support may reflect the characteristic of the person whom support taken from. The third determinant of the perceived support is interaction between the person who perceives support and the person whom support taken from. This special interaction reflects the special situation between two people (Yalcin, 2004: 45). Perceived social support can be evaluated as perceptions and expectations that can be taken from reliable individulas around him/her when needed.The buffer effect model and the main effect model have been proposed as two basic models about in which situations social support is necessary. The buffer effect model based on idea of providing source from the individuals in the social support network in order to overcome problems when faced stressful events. According to the main affect model, social support sources are effective factors on the protection of individulas' psychological and physical health without considering whether the individual is under stress or not (Krespi, 1993; Cohen & Wills, 1985: 310-357).When evaluated in terms of teachers, social support offers facilities for professional dialogue and cooperation between colleagues and offers solutions to understanding and solving problems at schools. In this cooperation and support process, teachers help and support each other more (Kroger, 1995: 545-551). Teachers are able to cooperate and support each other inside and outside the classroom through formal and informal ways. Systems that provide support for teachers can be classified as group directed by outside consultant, teacher support team and teacher support groups for individual teachers. Informal approach between colleagues may take place during coffee and tea breaks, in the corridor or in any social environment. This informal support is also important in the formation of collaborative environment in the school. The formal approaches for cooperation of colleagues are coaching and mentoring applications (Creese and etc., 1998: 109-114; Berardi & Hall, 2007; Tastan, 2008: 114). Because teaching profession is a quite stressful profession, teachers' perception of professional social support is very important. When teachers face irrelevant and low-motivated students in classrooms and receive low supports for improving their working conditions they may feel lonely. …