Abstract:
The purposes of this research were twofold : (1) to study attitudes towards teaching profession of the secondary school social studies teachers at the secondary education level in the government and private schools throughout the country, and (2) to compare attitudes towards teaching profession of social studies teachers according to the variables of sex, region, teaching experiences, and training. Procedures: A questionnaire on attitudes towards teaching profession consisting of checklist and rating scale items was constructed by the researcher. This questionnaire was sent to a sample of 611 social studies teachers stratified randomly selected from both government and private secondary schools throughout the country. Data were analyzed by means of percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation and t-test. Results: 1. Social studies teachers most highly agreed that they have the academic and professional competency, and the quality of social studies teachers such as self-confidence, curiosity, respects other peoples ideas, ability of verbal communication and human relationship. They also highly agreed that teaching profession is greatly respected and that social studies teachers should always seek more knowledge. Moreover social studies teachers should play an important role, have duty and be responsible for society. However, social studies teachers agreed moderately in terms of economic situation and social status of teachers. 2. Comparison of the attitudes towards teaching profession among social studies teachers in various aspects yielded the results as follows: 2.1 Attitudes towards teaching profession of social studies teachers in the central region and those in the provinces were significantly different at the 0.05 level which rejected the hypothesis. 2.2 Attitudes towards teaching profession of male social studies teachers and female social studies teachers were not significantly different at the 0.05 level which accepted the hypothesis. 2.3 Attitudes towards teaching profession of social studies teachers with more than 5 years of teaching experience and those with less than 5 years of teaching experience were not significantly different at the 0.05 level, which rejected the hypothesis. 2.4 Attitudes towards teaching profession of social studies teachers with pre-service traing in social studies teaching and those without pre-service training in social studies teaching were not significantly different at the 0.05 level, which rejected the hypothesis.