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Abstract
With regard to the increase in complex demands on teachers within the current social context, the teachers’ perspective on their own profession imposes itself as a very important research question. Given the lack of studies directed towards this issue in transitional countries such as Croatia, the aim of this qualitative study was to gain deeper insight into the Croatian elementary school teachers’ perspective on their profession. The study included specialist subject teachers working in higher levels of primary school education in Croatia. Using data obtained in four focus group discussions (total N = 29) and semi-structured interviews (N = 25), this paper reports on four themes relating to issues of perspective which emerged from the thematic analysis. First, teachers experience their profession as demanding and underestimated, but extremely important with regard to many changes in modern society. Second, difficulties in the work of elementary school teachers can be broadly summarized into four categories: student related, work-team related, parent related and education system-related, whereby the education-system category is the richest by content. Third, teachers’ descriptions of their job satisfaction, intention of leaving the profession, and willingness to recommend the job to young people are presented here with regard to the emergent sources of attitudes to work: the job itself, working hours, job security, low status of teachers, and current education system. Thereby, the job itself, working hours and job security may be described as sources of positive attitudes, while low status of teachers and current education system contribute to negative work attitudes. Finally, the article reports the teachers’ perspective on possible changes and improvements in the system within which they work.