Qualitative Interpretive Meta-Synthesis on the Meanings and Categories of Teacher Authority and Rights

This study aimed to synthesize the meanings and categories of teacher authority and rights (TAR) through a qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis (QIMS) of previous qualitative studies on TAR conducted in primary, secondary, and special school contexts. For this purpose, PRISMA 2020 was applied to collect and select prior qualitative studies, and seven articles were selected for final analysis. The QIMS was conducted in three stages: extraction of themes, synthesis of new overarching themes, and synergistic understanding. The main results are summarized as follows. First, the meanings of TAR were generated and synthesized into two new higher-level overarching themes: core and diffuse TAR. The core meaning of TAR included teacher educational rights (TER), teacher authority (TA), status and property rights, while the diffuse meaning of TAR included concepts generated from the educational relationship with students based on the core meaning and fundamental rights as human beings (FRHB). Next, the categories of TAR were synthesized into five new higher-level overarching themes: ‘TA’, ‘TER+TA’, ‘FRHB+TA’, ‘TER+FRHB+TA’, and ’rights as professionals+TER+TA’. Based on the findings, this study suggested the following recommendations to improve the laws and regulations: expanding the subjects of infringement of educational activities to ‘teachers, staff, students, or their guardians’, clarifying ‘acts of infringement of educational activities’ as ‘acts of infringement of TAR’, explicitly defining ‘FRHB’ and the terms of TA and undermining TA.