ASSESSING THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF CHEWING CHAT ON PROFESSIONAL ROLE OF TEACHERS IN OROMIA NATIONAL REGIONAL STATE, SOUTH WESTERN ETHIOPIA: THE CASE OF WOLISO ADMINISTRATIVE TOW

Abstract

The practice of chewing chat limits teacher’s professional roles in teaching and learning process. Absenteeism from their work places reduces teachers work effort, by affecting teachers’ legitimacy and interaction in the society, creating teachers who remain carelessness for their profession and the roles expected from them. Furthermore, it influences their performance and physical health disrupting their eating, sleeping, mental and other habits. It also affects financial capacity of chat chewers since they spend much on buying it to fulfill their common need, which could affect directly the life of their family and social responsibilities. Moreover, the purpose of this study was to investigate the negative effects of chewing chat on professional role of teachers in Waliso administrative town. In this study descriptive research design and mixed research approaches were employed. The researcher took three high schools through purposive sampling technique. Accordingly, 145 samples were taken using non-probability sampling in which accidental sampling for questionnaire, availability sampling for an interview and snowballing sampling method for the FGD. Additionally the target population of the study was high school teachers, student’s parliament of the town, school supervisors, chat sellers, Woliso administrative town education bureau officers and teachers association. The instruments of data collection were questionnaire, semi structured interview and FGD. And the data was analyzed through mixed research approaches; the data obtained through FGD and an interview was analyzed qualitatively, whereas the data obtained through questionnaire analyzed by SPSS. The findings of the study shows that chewing chat negatively affects the students learning out comes, economy of the chat chewer, social relationship of the users, psychology of the users and physical health of the users. As a result, chewing chat exposes productive society to become idle. Chat addicted teachers usually become very unstable, talkative, emotional, and aggressive. Chat chewing also associates with other unhealthy living habits like drinking alcohol and smoking cigarette. It also paves ways for illegal activities such as sexual harassment, corruption and thefts. Accordingly, Schools and their stakeholders should create a favorable condition for their teachers that encourage their stay at the working places. The school principals should encourage the social bonding between chat chewer teachers and non-chat chewers. The Schools stakeholders should give constructive advice that could improve the life and duties of chat addicted teachers. School principals should focus on ensuring local communities educational needs implementing the best approaches to treat addicted teachers. It is highly recommended to come up with new interpretation and analysis since gaps are inevitable in research writing