The Physical Education Teacher: Career and Occupation

Teachers with degrees in physical education end up doing work other than their training. That is, their studies and later and occupation do not agree and the official statistics indicate it.

In part, this phenomenon is common to the rest of the university graduates of different countries and studied under the term of overqualification. In this Psychology-Online article, we show a part of the evolution in the last three years and we will analyze the profile of the physical education teacher, his career and occupation.

Index

1. The career as a physical education teacher
2. Characteristics of overqualification
3. Effects of overqualification
4. Social impact of overqualification
5. Facts about working as a physical education teacher
6. The effect of the gender gap
7. Work as a physical education teacher and overqualification: conclusions

Graduates like Physical education specialty teacher they face a complex labor market and one in which they hold jobs below their professional qualifications. Overqualification describes the situation in which people are employed in jobs whose level of training required to perform them, is below the academic instruction available to the worker or candidate (Quintini, 2011b).

Without the intention of simplifying on such a complex issue, because it affects countries with different levels of economic development, different cultures and demographic structures, it is appreciated some important common data: it is constantly increasing in all European countries, it is higher among women, at least during the decade studied 2003-2013 (Mc Guiness, op. Cit.; Davia et als, 2017).

Specifically, in this report we intend to echo the evolution over these three years, in which a certain degree of improvement in the economic crisis situation in our country, focusing on the number of graduates as Diplomas in Teaching - Physical Education, in the number of contracts and in which occupations they have been given, based on data from the State Public Employment Service (SEPE)

If we stick to the most economic dimension, the existence of substantial differences according to the geographical area is pointed out, that is, the rates of over-qualification are more high and volatile in the environment of peripheral European countries (Mediterranean area), lower in Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Netherlands) and seems to follow a pattern cyclic.

Finally, they indicate that among the factors that contribute the most to this phenomenon are those related to the composition and the level of demand for labor, job offer and the structure of education, and a growing trend towards dispersion of the group of workers with university training.

According to García-Montalvo (2009 a), overqualification has a high degree of persistence, so much so that after five years a 25% of young people remain in the same situation and less than a third will be able to change to another job according to their qualification. It also reduces the profitability of education, as it increases.

García-Montalvo (2009) points out: “The consequences of overqualification are manifold. From the point of view of educational policy, a permanent situation of over-qualification supposes subsidizing, reducing the private cost, an activity that does not provides the society with the expected return and that it becomes simply an expensive procedure of subsidizing the recruitment processes of the Business. In this way, a part of the resources allocated to education could be dedicated to activities with greater social profitability.

“From the workers' point of view, overqualification generates enormous job dissatisfaction that it can have effects both on their behavior at work (absenteeism, high turnover) and on their health (low selfsteem, poor psychological health, drug problems, etc.).

This situation would lead to lower productivity compared to workers who have jobs adjusted to their qualifications, which would also be a problem for companies. Budría and Moro-Egido (2008) show that the increase in strong overqualification in Spain derives in a significant increase in the dispersion of salaries within the group of university students. " pp. 12-13.

The methodological difficulties associated with the measurement of the mismatch between qualifications and the occupations performed are multiple and are far from the objective of this However, a distinction is made between objective and subjective measurements, with a large number of factors considered at the time of study

These continuous ups and downs do not solve the problem of insertion, nor of the occupation of graduates, achieving that increase frustration among students and generating a worrying disorientation. However, first-hand, the analysis is easy, as pointed out by Pineda et als (2016) who indicate that “the Results show the negative effect of the crisis on the job placement of graduates and their conditions. The percentage of employment of graduates in low education, from the 2007 to 2010 class, by almost 10%.

The occupations present less contractual stability and worse adjustment with the studied careers, aggravating the problem of overqualification ”pp. 5. This training and qualification mismatch is an argument that acts as a reference on a large number of phenomena (Mavromaras, K.S., 2013; Robts, 2007). An equally interesting dimension is the one related to the repercussions on individuals and health effects and the behavior of many frustrated candidates and students, and even among immigrant populations (Chen, 2010, George, 2015).

However, despite its obvious interest, it is not the object of this investigation. Without disregarding the importance of these phenomena, we are going to focus on the existing data on the number of unemployed, the number of contracts made and depending on the official data offered by the public employment system Spanish.

If we look at the data of the Table 1, there is a decrease in the number of jobseekers with the degree of "Teacher, Specialty of Physical Education" from 6193 March 2015 to 5305 March 2017. Of which 66, 94% were unemployed and 69.9% had a job prior to that recorded in the official data. The same trend can be seen in the decreasing number of registered unemployed (row 2) and in the volume of people with a previous job, also decreasing (row 3). However, and despite including a greater number of degrees, it should be noted that the number of applicants was reduced by less than 888 people, in a three-year period.

Regarding the number of most hired occupations, we take the official data where the ten most representative are reflected, quantitatively. It can be seen that in March 2015 the most hired occupation was “Recreational and entertainment activities monitor”, followed by “Salaried waiters”. The same trend is repeated in March 2016, although it decreases in the first case (recreational activities monitor ...), and is maintained in March 2017, but to a lesser extent. Without wishing to be defeatist, the data seem to indicate that, possibly, our educational and productive system, does not manage to insert our graduates, not even in occupations outside our natural professional environment: teaching, or at least it does it insufficiently

Aware of the inability to deduce the quality and satisfaction of the graduates with the new job, as well as the adjustment between their expectations and the contracts to Those who finally access, based only on these statistical data, we try to offer a panoramic view of the situation that such data offers us officers. The economic crisis situation has given rise to a labor situation characterized by the temporality, precarious salary, and the recovery translates into higher employment in the service sector (hospitality and tourism) (Economy Weblog, 2017).

TABLE 1:

In sum, 1 in four contracts is for women, 1 in five for unemployed women, therefore likely to be hired. It cannot be established, that there will undoubtedly exist, from these succinct data, the reason behind this low level of hiring and under-representation of women in unemployment statistics, when there is also the perception of constituting the majority of students in these careers (data that we currently lack). Reasons related to maternity, the need to care for minors and elderly dependents, the possible abandonment due to discouragement of the unemployment records, the resource to give way to the professional development of the husband or partner (with better salaries and professional projection), together with the feminization of the profession teacher. Many of these factors are aggravated by stereotypes and gender roles.

In principle, the data could be interpreted in the opposite direction, as favorable to women: they represent a lower proportion of the unemployed and also of contracts. But, given that it is a very simplistic interpretation and that it is not lawful to draw such conclusions from these data, we must indicate that we do not know the reality that underlies these data collected here. We intend to highlight these data and that they help, if they are of interest, to the debate on the training, qualifications and insertion of students and, when reflecting on the new degrees, curriculums (the easy solution is to change the degree and make the physical education teacher disappear and also the statistical criteria of the unemployed). No less important would be to study the repercussions on people, on a psychological and personal level, although this aspect is not the objective of this study.

Overqualification understood as the gap between the level of training achieved by a person and the qualification necessary to carry out a certain job, is an important factor when it comes to study the insertion of university graduates.

Its importance is not negligible when planning the development of the training and qualifications of the students, as well as their subsequent labor insertion. This phenomenon has an impact on the expenditure on training carried out, both by society as a whole, as well as by specific people and their families. And even, it has no less importance in the economic return received by society and the people who carry out this training: society as a whole makes a significant investment and expense in generating a human resource, which in the long run underused.

However, these data point to a poor insertion of graduates who have to turn their future employment towards occupations for which they are overqualified or directly unprepared (waiters, postmen, farm laborers, etc). In addition, they are doomed to part-time jobs, with a high number of contracts and in an environment in which women are a minority (fewer contracts and less presence in employment records), something that in This principle draws attention considering its majority presence in the classroom and in the teaching world of work (well because it constitutes the majority of candidates or by abandonment of this occupational environment), aspect about which we cannot hypothesize, insofar as it is not plausible to draw conclusions about it with these data available

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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