Who is attending training to comply with the expectations of the school management? A study among Romanian in-service teachers

ABSTRACTThe problem of teachers’ motivations for participating in training is central in any education system because it shapes the system’s capacity to adapt to the rapidly changing reality. The aim of this paper is to estimate the prevalence of this motivation among Romanian teachers and to identify certain predictors beyond such motivations for training enrolment. Our paper contributes to the understanding of Romanian in-service teachers’ participation in training in relation to the desire to comply with the management’s expectations. The method involves an online national survey conducted in 2021 with approximately 5,000 in-service teachers. Our study’s results indicate that 38.6% assessed compliance with management expectations as a high motivation to participate in training. The profile of the Romanian ‘conformist’ teachers has several distinctive characteristics: higher interest in career advancement, higher satisfaction with the existent financial mechanisms for attending training, lower level of qualification and lower self-evaluated difficulties in blended teaching.KEYWORDS: In-service teachersteachers’ continuous professional developmentteachers’ motivations for attending trainingteachers’ compliance with school managementRomania’s education system Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingAlin Croitoru’s work on this article was funded by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu under the research grant LBUS-IRG-2022-08.Notes on contributorsAlin CroitoruAlin Croitoru (PhD) is Associate Professor at Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. He has experience in quantitative analysis and mixed-methods social research. He worked as a researcher in several European research consortiums (e.g., EUCROSS – FP7, YMOBILITY – Horizon 2020, SafeHabitus – Horizon Europe) and national research projects implemented by Ministry of Education and World Bank. He published in several high-impact peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Population, Space and Place; Journal of Contemporary European Studies; Current Sociology) and authored several books on social changes in post-communist Romania. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6051-7963Daniel MaraDaniel MARA (Professor, Ph.D., habil.) has been teaching at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu since 2001, and in 2013 he became a Full Professor. In 2004, he received his PhD from Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, in the field of educational psychology, and in 2016 he was habilitated at the University of Bucharest in the field of inclusive education. He obtained his BA in Pedagogy – Romanian Language and Literature (1997) and diploma advanced studies in Integrated education (1998) at Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. Currently, he is Full Professor at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Dean of Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, and member of Doctoral School of Psychology (West University of Timisoara) and member of the Doctoral School of Pedagogical Sciences (University of Bologna, Italy). His subfields of interest are: inclusive education, intercultural education, teacher’s training. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1211-1504Felicia MorândăuFelicia Morândău (PhD) is Associate Professor at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. Her research is focused on topics from the area of Sociology of Education, Sociology of Family, and Sociology of Emotions. She accumulated 20 years of experience in research and her portfolio of publications includes articles in top journals in education and social sciences (e.g., Educational Review, Sustainability, Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation), as well as management positions in educational projects on career counselling for high school students. Currently, she participates as an educational researcher in a national project implemented by the Romanian Ministry of Education to reform the system of professional development of Romanian teachers. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9700-5734