The prestige of Hungarian educators from Romania during the Romanian educational reform

Abstract

The Romanian educational system was one of the most centralized ones before the change of the political system, thus, it is not accidental that after the change of the political system the decentralization of education seemed to be a real claim. As one of its consequences the Romanian education has been the scene of permanent changes for the past one and a half decades, and the changes influenced in several points the work and the situation of the teachers. Against such a background our basic research question emerged which aimed the relationship between the educational reform and the teachers. In this study we present only a segment of the results of our research, namely the presentation of the opinion that a strata of the Hungarian teachers from Romania has about the social appreciation of their profession. The results shows that the teachers from Hargita County are not satisfied with the social appreciation of their profession either, they consider that it is worse than of other intellectual categories. Further on, the inquired teachers are unsatisfied with the “official” appreciation of the profession, at the same time the appreciation of the different teachers profession is in relationship with the activities on the different levels of education. The Hungarian teachers from the small region see the rise of esteem of the profession in the solving of the problems of financing, of educational policy and of the teachers vocational courses.