Constance of teachers’ beliefs concerning the fulfillment of their professional roles in the changing school in light of empirical research

Abstract

This article is an empirical article. The aim of the study was to compare teachers’ opinions on fulfilling their professional roles in the changing school over the last two decades. The exploration was carried out so as to provide the answer to the research question: Are there any differences, and if so, what differences are there, in teachers’ beliefs concerning the fulfillment of their professional roles, after successive changes introduced in school in the years 1998, 2009 and 2019? In the longitudinal comparison strategy, the survey method was used, and the research instrument was an original survey questionnaire prepared by Agata Popławska. The obtained results show that within the last two decades, teachers’ beliefs concerning themselves and their teaching practice have not changed. Their self-evaluation of autonomously carrying out the didactic and educational process has been quite high throughout this time. However, in each period (1998, 2009, 2019), only one-third of the respondents declared they were modernizing their didactic and educational activity. The paradox of the situation is that externally stimulated changes resulting from the introduction of successive educational reforms did not significantly translate into a change in teachers’ functioning.