The Correlation Research On Rural Teachers' Job Characteristics And Their Subsidies

In order to promote the urban-rural integration for balanced development in China,the Chinese government proposed a Rural Revitalization Strategy in the report of the19 th CPC National Congress.The implementation of this strategy is inseparable from the revitalization of rural education.Rural teachers are the most important human resources and the first impetus to revitalizing rural education and enhancing the quality of education.Therefore,it is necessary to develop a group of qualified teaching staff in rural ares.Because of the harsh environment,poor working conditions and low welfare in rural areas of China,there are three persistent problems in the construction of rural teachers,namely,“unwilling to work in rural areas”,“unwilling to work stably in rural areas ”,“unqualified to teach in rural areas”.Improving the rural teachers' income is a key to the above mentioned problems under current situation in China.The subsidy is an important compensatory part of the structure of teachers' income,which fully reflects the principle of compensation for teachers due to unfavorable factors.In terms of accurate distribution of the subsidy of rural teachers,rural teachers' job characteristics are an important basis.This has been reinforced by a national policy Rural Teachers' Support Plan in 2015.This policy promulgates that “differentiated subsidies should be implemented according to the degree of hardship and distance,which means the more difficult the area is,the higher subsidy level should be distributed to the teachers working in the areas.”Since the 21 st century,rural teachers' job characteristics,salaries and other issues have received extensive attention from domestic and foreign academics.The positive correlation of negative job characteristics and teachers' income has been justified by empirical data.However,the current research in China mainly focuses on the current situation of teachers' salaries or work and life status.The research on teachers' job characteristics is not comprehensive enough.So far there is no substantial evidence todemonstrate whether and how teachers in rural areas in China have received differential subsidies or other compensation income due to the negative job characteristics.Therefore,this study focused on the rural teachers' subsidies and their job characteristics.The following questions were investigated:(1)What is the status of rural teachers' job characteristics and the level of their subsidies?(2)What are the differences in terms of the subjective feelings of rural teachers' job characteristics based on their differentiated personal attributes?(3)What is the correlation of the rural teachers' job characteristics and each dimension of their subsidies?Based on the literature review on the theory of compensating wage differential and job characteristics of teachers,the researcher developed a model of teachers' subsidy income and job characteristics which demonstrated rural teachers' job characteristics including subjective feelings and objective conditions and the theoretical relationship between teachers' subsidy income and job characteristics.The full-time rural teachers in the compulsory education in an impoverished mountainous area of southwest China were selected as samples in this study.Eleven staff members,including local education bureau staff,rural school leaders,and rural teachers were interviewed initially to refine the research instrument.Then a questionnaire was distributed to 842 rural teachers from this impoverished mountainous area.A total of 806 valid questionnaires were collected.SPSS21.0 software was used for empirical analysis of the data.The study found that,the theory of compensating wage differential had not been consistently verified.A phenomenon of “negative compensation” occurs in terms of the subjective feelings of job characteristics,which means the more negative factors in teachers' job characteristics existed,the lower subsidy they got.In the objective aspects of rural teachers' job characteristics,some dimensions of job characteristics manifested a significantly positive correlation with teachers' subsidies,which implied the more negative teacher' job characteristics existed,the higher subsidy they got.However the degree of positive impact was small and rural teachers cannot obtain higher subsidy although they were located in the context with more negative job characteristics.The specific conclusions were as follows:(1)The rural teachers' subsidies were low and less diversified.54.4% of the teacher samples whose monthly subsidy income were less than400 yuan.Teachers had a strong sense of busyness and a lighter sense of interpersonal conflict.Both variables of the“lack of support and fairness” and “perceived social bias” were in the middle degree.The teaching of teachers was complicated with long working hours and heavy workload,and they needed to undertake a large amount ofextra working tasks which were unrelated to teaching and learning.(2)In terms of group differences in rural teachers' subjective feelings of negative job characteristics,female teachers samples were significantly higher than their male counterparts in “perceived social bias”.Rural teachers with bachelor degree or above perceived significantly more social bias than those with the college degree.Teachers with less teaching experience had a stronger perception of negative job characteristics.Teachers with lower professional titles were more sensitive to negative job characteristics.(3)The multivariate logistic regression showed that,firstly in the subjective feelings of job characteristics,“interpersonal consumption and conflict” had a significantly positive correlation with teachers' subsidies.The more interpersonal consumption and conflict they perceived,the higher subsidy they could get.However,“the lack of support and fairness ” had a significantly negative correlation with teachers' subsidy.The more shortage of support and fairness teachers perceived,the lower subsidy they got.Secondly,in the objective conditions of job characteristics,the longer teachers' working hours were,the higher subsidy they got,but the degree of positive impact was small.Teachers in more remote and non-central schools received more subsidies than those in central schools.The variables from other dimensions had little or no significant correlation with teacher' subsidies so that teachers with a difficult environment could not obtain corresponding compensatory income.The above research findings implied that although our country has promulgated a series of policies to promote the job of rural teachers,but the policy implementation has not been effectively conducted in this impoverished mountainous area.There were still many problems in the distribution of rural teachers' subsidies.The local education bureau failed to set a guidance of the subsidy distribution of the rural teachers.The teachers could not get the corresponding subsidies in line with their negative job characteristics.Therefore,the policy implementation effect was not good enough to compensate and motivate teachers.This study put forward two aspects of policy suggestions.They were(1)The central and provincial government should increase financial and policy support for rural teachers' subsidies,increase rural teachers' subsidies or other compensatory wages,and establish;a subsidy compensation mechanism based on differences in the teachers' job characteristics should also be developed to guide local governments' implement policies accurately according to the reality of rural teachers' job characteristics.(2)All governments from central to regionalshould attach great importance to the rural teachers' job characteristics and improve their working conditions and living environment.Educational administration and schools should reduce the non-teaching-related work of teachers and support the professional development of rural teachers.A more supportive and friendly external atmosphere should be created as well to promote rural teachers job.