The purpose of this study was to present basic data that could help improve the level of childcare teachers' awareness of rights and the system for protecting their rights. This study intends to povide policy implications by identifying the level of c...
The purpose of this study was to present basic data that could help improve the level of childcare teachers' awareness of rights and the system for protecting their rights. This study intends to povide policy implications by identifying the level of childcare teachers' awareness of rights, the status of rights guarantee, and the violation of rights establishment, focusing on the Labor Standards Act.
For this purpose, the level of awareness of rights, the status of rights guarantees, and the violation of rights establishment were measured among 240 childcare teachers working at daycare centers located in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do. Descriptive analysis, independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA, and frequency analysis were performed using the SPSS 21.0 software package.
The main results of this study are as follows. First, both the level of childcare teachers' awareness of rights and the status of the rights guarantee of daycare centers were slightly lower than the average.
Second, among level of childcare teachers' awareness of rights, the results related to labor contract, employment rules, vacations, medical care, and compensation differed depending on the teachers’ general backgrounds such as age, education, and career, but there was no difference in the level of awareness of rights according to job position. This shows that the age, education, and career of childcare teachers may affect the level of rights awareness.
Third, the actual state of rights guarantees of daycare centers for labor contract, employment rules, vacations, care and compensation differed depending on the type of establishment of daycare centers. In particular, national public daycare centers were the best guarantee of the childcare teachers' rights compared to other types of centers.
Fourth, childcare teachers pointed out that the high teacher-child ratio was the most important factor hindering the establishment of their rights. In addition, they also responded that unrealistic levels of salary, social perception that is not recognized as an expert, overload of tasks, and lack of legal and institutional mechanisms were factors that threaten the protection of their rights.
The results of this study show that the level of childcare teachers' awareness of rights presented in the Labor Standards Act was slightly lower than the average, and childcare teachers were not guaranteed even the minimum rights that should be guaranteed by the Labor Standards Act. There is a limit to guarantee the rights of them under the Labor Standards Act because the actual content and characteristics of childcare job are heterogeneous with those specified in the Labor Standards Act. Therefore, it seems necessary to improve laws and systems to protect the rights of childcare teachers, and to develop and operate educational programs that deal with specific details of laws and systems to improve the level of childcare teachers' awareness of rights.