Socio-economic characteristics, perception and coping strategies of secondary school teachers in the Division of Guimaras

Abstract

The teacher of today is expected to demonstrate competencies which include conceptual, technical, human, and coping skills. For a teacher to be effective, he must possess coping skills to meet the demands of a rapidly transforming world. He must have the ability to cope with his socio-economic conditions for productive solution in problem solving, whether in his school, in the barangay, or in the community. This study was conducted to determine the relationship between socio-economic characteristics, perception of their socio-economic conditions and coping strategies of the secondary school teachers in the Division of Guimaras. Specifically, it aimed to determine: (1) the socio-economic characteristics of the secondary school teachers in the Division of Guimaras; (2) their perception of their socio-economic conditions; (3) their coping strategies employed to cope with socio-economic problems; (4) the relationship between socio-economic characteristics of secondary school teachers and their perception of their socio-economic conditions; (5) the relationship between perception of socioeconomic conditions and coping strategies of the teachers; (6) the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and the coping strategies of the secondary teachers; and (7) the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and coping strategy controlling perception of socio-economic conditions. This study was anchored on the theory of Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of needs which viewed needs as being set in ascending order to form a hierarchy and that these needs serve as motivators when they are not satisfied. It is innate for human beings to search for ways to meet their various needs. The study made use of the descriptive research design. The respondents were one-hundred, fifty-seven (157) public secondary school teachers who were chosen from two hundred, sixty-six (266) total population from sixteen (16) public secondary schools using multi-stage sampling procedure. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to gather the data needed in the study. The questionnaire was composed of three parts. Part 1 was about the personal information of the teachers and descriptions as to their socio-economic characteristics. Part 2 measured teachers’ perception of their socio-economic condition, and Part 3 measured teachers' coping strategies to address their economic difficulties. The instrument was subjected to content validation by the jurors of experts and reliability testing using Cronbach’s alpha. The researcher personally administered the instrument to the respondents. Frequency count, percentage, means, standard deviation. Gamma and Cramer's V were the statistical tools used in order to analyze the data gathered.