Teacher and school determinants of teacher job satisfaction: a multilevel analysis

ABSTRACT

Teacher job satisfaction is an essential factor for teachers’ and school effectiveness and students’ academic and educational achievement. The present research aims to identify variables that contribute to job satisfaction in a Portuguese sample of lower secondary education teachers, using data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013. Two questionnaires were used to collect data: a school principal’s questionnaire, and a teacher questionnaire. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to study the relation of school-level and teacher-level variables to job satisfaction. The results show that teacher-level variables are better predictors of teacher job satisfaction than school-level variables, except for the variable public/private school. In addition, variables related to interpersonal relations emerge as the most significant predictors of job satisfaction. The results suggest that, in order to improve, schools must take care of interpersonal relations, mainly at the classroom level, where most of the perceived job satisfaction seems to rest.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher job satisfaction
• multilevel analysis
• teacher–students relations
• school climate
• classroom discipline

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

João Lopes holds a PhD in Psychology, and he is a hired Professor in the School of Psychology of the University of Minho. His research interests are in the areas of learning disabilities, reading instruction, classroom behaviour problems, and classroom management. He has written more than a dozen books on these subjects, as well as research papers.

Célia Oliveira holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Minho. She holds a Master Degree in Clinical Psychology with a thesis titled “Working Memory in a Group of School Aged Children With ADHD”. As a school psychologist, she focused on the developmental problems of handicapped children and on the learning problems of school-aged children. She currently teaches Psychology at the O’Porto Lusófona University.

Notes

1 “The design effect quantifies the effect of independence violations on standard error estimates and is an estimate of the multiplier that needs to be applied to standard errors to correct for the negative bias that results from nested data.” (Peugh, 2010, p. 91)