Religious Orientations of Teachers

Abstract

Religious attitudes are regarded as one of the influential variables in the personality, behaviour, psychological health and relationships with others, which is a reflection of the individual's understanding of religion and the way he practises his religious beliefs. This makes it an important subject for scientific research, especially among teachers in Iraqi society. Therefore, the present research seeks to identify:

• Religious orientations of teachers in the centre of the city of Diwaniyah.
• Indicative of statistical differences in the religious attitudes of teachers in the center of Diwaniyah city according to gender variables and years of service.

In order to achieve the research's objectives, the two researchers worked on the measure of religious orientation, which was finalized in 23 paragraphs, 11 paragraphs measuring substantive religious orientation, and 12 paragraphs measuring apparent religious orientation. After verifying its availability on the desired psychometric cykometric properties, the scale was applied to the research sample of 400 teachers. They were selected in the simple random sample style. After correcting the scale forms and using appropriate statistical means using the Spss social science statistical bag, the results of the research showed the following:

1.Teachers have a high degree of substantive religious orientation.

1. There are no statistically significant differences at 0.05 in the substantive religious orientation according to the gender variable, while significant differences have emerged in this orientation according to the years of service and for teachers with 21 years of service. There are statistically significant differences in apparent religious orientation according to the variable sex and for female teachers, while there are no differences in this orientation according to years of service.

The two researchers presented a set of recommendations and proposals at the end of this research. Among the recommendations: the importance of promoting practices and behaviors indicative of a fundamental religious orientation against that indication of a prima facie religious orientation. The two researchers proposed to study patterns of religion common in Iraqi society and a working study of religious attitudes among teachers.