32. Organizational Education
Paper
Teachers' job satisfaction: The Organizational perspective
Rinat Arviv Elyashiv
Kibbutzim College of Education, Israel
Presenting Author: Arviv Elyashiv, Rinat
Teacher attrition has become an increasingly serious issue in Israel during the past few decades (Arviv Elyashiv & Navon, 2021; Yinon & Orland-Barak, 2017). A report from the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS, 2022) revealed that in 2019 there was a 27% increase in the number of teachers who decided to leave the teaching profession, while the recruitment rate declined sharply (around 7%). This crisis has become more severe among novice teachers, with 30% quitting the profession within the first three years (Arviv Elyashiv & Zimmerman, 2015). The cost of the high level of attrition in the Israeli education system is seen in the alarming shortage of teachers (Donitsa-Schmich & Zuzovsky, 2020). Similar concerns were echoed in other Europe, (e.g. Brok et al., 2017; Toropova et al., 2021), as well as in the U.S (Ingersoll et al., 2012). Empirical evidence shows that teacher attrition diminishes when teachers feel satisfied and content with their job (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011).
Job satisfaction refers to employees’ attitudes toward their working conditions and profession (Wang et al., 2020). Job satisfaction within the teaching profession represents positive emotional attitudes toward the teaching role (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011). Extensive research has recognized the contribution of job satisfaction to enhancing positive work-related behaviors, such as retention, attendance, organizational commitment, professional obligation, quality teaching, and accountability (Klassen & Chiu, 2011; Olsen & Huang, 2019; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011). Many studies have investigated the factors predicting teachers' job satisfaction. They have identified student characteristics, teacher backgrounds, teachers' working conditions, and school composition. The current study builds on this literature while elaborating on the school organizational mechanisms that encourage job satisfaction. Previous research has recognized some of the school factors, which ensure quality of teachers’ work: adequate resources, feasible workload, collegial cooperation, opportunities for professional development and leadership support. This study further discussed how such factors contribute to teachers' job satisfaction, while adding to the discussion other main organizational components: organizational autonomy, decision-making opportunities, promotional prospects, and school project involvement openings. The study aimed to explore how teachers' perceptions of school organizational mechanisms with respect to their job routine operates as a determinant of their job satisfaction. The Israeli case is intriguing in this regard. The TALIS 2018 survey indicated that Israeli teachers feel content and satisfied (RAMA, 2019). According to the survey results, most teachers (around 90%) enjoyed their work and ranked their school as highly recommended. At the same time, they experienced high levels of stress, burnout, and attrition (Arviv Elyashiv & Zimmerman, 2015; Shorosh & Berkovich, 2022). Moreover, the Israeli education system is centralized, while teaching offers only a moderate level of autonomy and participation in decision-making (Arviv Elyashiv & Zimmerman, 2015) and the available paths to promotion are limited (Avidov-Ungar & Arviv Elyashiv, 2018). Moreover, teachers work under rigorous regulations, constant supervision, intense parental involvement, and regular examinations of student performance through a high-stakes testing regime (Feniger et al., 2016). In this situation, the TALIS results were quite surprising. Therefore, the study intends to explore the contribution of organizational mechanisms in predicting teachers' job satisfaction in the Israeli education system.
Research questions:
- How do teachers perceive school organizational mechanisms which are related to their work routine?
- To what extant do teachers' perception regarding school organizational mechanisms predict their job satisfaction?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedContext: Teaching in Israel is considered a comfortable form of employment with a high level of job security, and which enables a good work-life balance. Most teachers are employed by the state and usually receive tenure after three years; they are then protected and cannot be easily dismissed. At the same time, teaching is considered an unattractive occupation with low status and prestige (Donitsa-Schmich et al., 2021). Low salaries coupled with difficult working conditions are the main reasons for the low status of the teaching profession, and for the high proportion of teacher attrition.
Participants: Data was collected among Israeli K-12 teachers in both the Jewish and Arab sectors. Using snowball-sampling methods, teachers were recruited through online professional networks and forums as well as with the assistance of contact persons in various schools. We sent email invitations to approximately 2000 teachers. In total, 718 teachers completed the survey (35% response rate): 502 were women (69.9%). The distribution of the participants approximates that of teachers in the general population. The majority of the participants were employed in the Jewish education system (604 teachers, 84.1%), whereas 114 (15.9%) taught in the minority Arab sector. The average number of years of experience among the participants was 13.01 years (range: 1-42 years, SD=9.26).
Research questionnaire: An anonymous questionnaire was administered to the participants. The questionnaire consisted of Likert scale items, ranging from 1= do not agree to 5 = agree completely.
Analysis: The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and ANOVA tests. A linear regression was estimated to examine the effect of the explanatory (school organizational mechanisms) on teachers’ job satisfaction (dependent variable).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIn the current study we analyzed the relationship between school organizational mechanisms and teachers' job satisfaction, while focusing on the following mechanisms: leadership support and trust, collegial cooperation, decision-making opportunities, organizational autonomy, school project involvement openings and promotional prospects.
Preliminary findings show that school organizational mechanisms were perceived as supportive and encouraging by the teachers who have participated in the study (M=3.73, SD=1.07). Leadership support and trust has reached the highest score (M=4.08, SD=1.03). Teacher also admitted that they experienced high level of organizational autonomy (M=4.04, SD=.94) and decision-making opportunities (M=3.85, SD=1.08) as part of their daily work at school. Other schools' mechanisms: collegial cooperation, school project involvement openings and promotional prospects, were provided to the teachers on a moderate extent.
The school organizational mechanisms that were examined in the study, were found to positively correlated with teachers' job satisfaction. Only one coefficient had reached non-significant outcome, school project involvement openings. Some differences were found between the Jewish and the Arab sector. These differences imply that school organizational mechanisms that promote inclusive practices, and have a potential to increase teachers' job satisfaction, are more likely to take place in the Jewish sector. Implications of these developments will discussed in the presentation.
ReferencesArviv Elyashiv, R. & Navon, Y. (2021). Teacher attrition: Human capital and terms of employment – Do they matter? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 29(76),1-23.
Arviv Elyashiv, R. & Zimmerman, V. (2015). Which teachers are liable to dropout? Demographic, occupational and institutional characteristics of teaching dropouts. Dapim, 59, 175-206. [Hebrew]
Avidov-Ungar, O. & Arviv-Elyashiv, R. (2018). Teacher perceptions of empowerment and promotion during reforms. International Journal of Educational Management, 32(1),155-170.
Brok, P., Wubbels, T. & Van Tartwijk, J. (2017). Exploring beginning teachers’ attrition in the Netherlands. Teachers and Teaching, 23(8),881-895.
Donitsa-Schmich, S. Ramot, R. & Zuzovsky, R. (2021). The status of the teacher in Israel under the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Research report. Kibbutzim College of Education, Israel. [Hebrew]
Donitsa-Schmich, S. & Zuzovsky, R. (2020). Teacher shortage and teacher surplus: Jewish vs. Arab educational sectors in Israel. In: T. Ovenden-Hope & R. Passy (Eds). Exploring Teacher Recruitment and Retention (pp.185-196). London: Routledge.
Feniger, Y., Israeli, M. & Yehuda, S. (2016). The power of numbers: The adoption and consequences of national low-stakes standardised tests in Israel. Globalisation Societies and Education, 14(2),183-202.
Ingersoll, R.M., Merrill, L. & May, H. (2012). Retaining teachers: How preparation matters. Educational Leadership, 69(8),30-34.
CBS. (2022). Teaching staff, 2012/22. Report, Jerusalem:. [Hebrew]
Klassen, R.M. & Chiu, M.M. (2011). The occupational commitment and intention to quit of practicing and p,re-service teachers: Influence of self-efficacy, job stress, and teaching context. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(2),114-129.
Olsen, A.A. & Huang, F.L. (2018). Teacher job satisfaction by principal support and teacher cooperation: Results from the Schools and Staffing Survey. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(11),1-27.
RAMA (2019). TALIS 2018: Israeli perspective report. Jerusalem:RAMA.
Shorosh, S. & Berkovich, I. (2022). The relationships between workgroup emotional climate and teachers’ burnout and coping style. Research Papers in Education, 37(2),182-198.
Skaalvik, E.M. & Skaalvik, S. (2011). Teacher job satisfaction and motivation to leave the teaching profession: Relations with school context, feeling of belonging, and emotional exhaustion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(6),1029-1038.
Toropova, A., Myrberg, E. & Johansson, S. (2021). Teacher job satisfaction: The importance of school working conditions and teacher characteristics. Educational Review, 73(1),71-97.
Wang, K., Li, Y., Luo, W. & Zhang, S. (2020). Selected factors contributing to teacher job satisfaction: A quantitative investigation using 2013 TALIS data. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 19(3),512-532.
Yinon, H. & Orland-Barak, L. (2017). Career stories of Israeli teachers who left teaching: A salutogenic view of teacher attrition. Teachers and Teaching, 23(8),914-927.
32. Organizational Education
Paper
Disruptions, Continuities, Reinventions: Post-disaster Schools Through the Lens of Organisational Resilience
Karin Doolan
University of Zadar, Croatia
Presenting Author: Doolan, Karin
As Tierney (2019) has pointed out, natural hazards are becoming increasingly frequent, devastating occurrences across the globe. Educational researchers have engaged with the risk and effects of hazards including floods, earthquakes and fires by focusing on the physical vulnerability of educational institutions and their hazard protection infrastructure (e.g. Ochola, Eitel and Olago 2010, Schulze et al. 2020), emergency preparedness in terms of risk perception and awareness, contingency plans and checklists (e.g. Momani and Salmi 2012, Marincioni and Fraboni 2011, Soffer et al. 2009), the effects of disasters on academic achievement (e.g. Doyle, Lockwood, Comiskey 2017), students’ psychological and physical health (e.g. Tapsell and Tunstall 2008), and curriculum provision in terms of delivering planned educational content (e.g. Convery, Carroll and Balogh 2014). This presentation will contribute to a missing link in the reviewed disasters and education research landscape: how disasters affect schools as organisations and what enhances their resilience. In doing so, the presentation will reflect on the concept of organisational resilience, which has been used by scholars to conceptualise the ability of organizations to anticipate disasters, productively cope with them and learn and grow from the experience. The concept of organizational resilience is not without its critics, and has been portrayed as ambiguous and “fuzzy” (Hillman and Guenther, 2021), akin to the more general concept of “resilience”. Contributing to this fuzziness, according to Hillman and Guenther (2021), are its multiple definitions, its relation to different context-specific phenomena, its single and yet also multi-level nature, and its heterogeneity across organizations. Against this background, and drawing on the work of Vakilzadeh and Haase (2021), Orru et al. (2021), and Ball’s (2012) discussion of the “micro-politics of the school”, the presentation will forward a critically-informed sociological concept of organisational resilience as an analytical tool for exploring the empirically neglected internal politics and dynamics of schools, as well as the external framework conditions shaping them ahead of, during and following states of “rupture”. Organisational resilience encapsulates interwoven aspects of formal and informal school life that can be subsumed under the categories of organizational structure and procedures, school infrastructure, equipment, and the skills required for benefitting from it, school finances, school organizational culture with an emphasis on values, social relations among staff, social relations between staff and external collaborators, leadership, and external political, social and economic dynamics. In terms of the latter, as Ball (2012) notes, a question needs to be raised about “the extent to which the internal dynamics of an organization are independent of, conditioned or determined by, outside forces” (2012, pp. 247). Accordingly, the objective of the presentation is to provide insight into the foci of existing research on education and disasters (largely conducted outside Europe, in the USA and countries of the Global South), and to reflect on the concept of organisational resilience in an educational setting by drawing on findings from a multiple-case study approach which explored how schools in Croatia coped with the effects of disasters. Study insights will be compared and contrasted with similar research studies in Europe and beyond.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedSimilar to Tipler et al.’s (2018) study on how schools in Christchurch New Zealand responded to the effects of an earthquake, the study reported in this presentation used a multiple-case study approach in order to explore how three schools in Croatia had been affected by disasters. According to Jensen and Rodgers’ (2001, p. 237-239) case study typology, this is an example of comparative case study research where multiple case studies are used for cross-unit comparison, thus enabling an intensive investigation of several instances of the researched phenomenon. The selected public primary schools suffered significant physical damage during a disastrous event: two were affected by an earthquake in 2020 and one by a flood in 2014. Two main methods of data collection were used. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in June and September 2022 with school principals and teachers from each of the three schools (20 in total). These interviews followed an interview guide informed by the concept of organizational resilience, while also incorporating questions raised in conversation with the study participants. In addition, appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider and Srivastva 1987) was used with interviewed school staff. Appreciative inquiry is a method aimed at contributing to organisational learning and change rooted in the experiences of those participating in the life of the organisation. In the researched schools it took the form of day-long workshops that involved school staff in a series of activities aimed at encouraging collaborative reflection on the effects of the disaster and contributing to the development of a joint school resilience plan. Activities included group drawing of a time-line of school life prior to and immediately following the disaster as well as present-day school life, a group discussion on school values, and co-writing in pairs a vignette on the most significant change in school life experienced as a result of the disaster. According to Tierney (2019, pp. 113), ethical questions regarding what is owed to participants in research can be especially poignant in the case of disaster studies. In the reported study, appreciative inquiry was used as a method of data collection grounded in collaboration and dialogue, but also as a tool for enhancing reciprocity. The use of this participatory approach in exploring the effects of disasters in education is a contribution to methodological diversity in educational research since reviewed studies in this field predominantly use survey and interview data.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2021) will be used in order to identify how schools as organizations have been affected by disasters and what enhanced or weakened their resilience. Preliminary findings suggest that school displacement due to damage to the school building, or having to house a displaced school, were the most significant disruptions to schools that required a reshuffling of organisational procedures, a process underpinned by both resentment and gratitude. Disasters also appear to expand teacher roles and affect social relations among staff. For instance, many teachers recounted having to undertake physical labour to help school recovery. Divisions and tensions between those who were more and those who were less involved in recovery were highlighted in one school in particular. An urge for continuity and “going back to how things were” in the school was initially a priority for the study participants, though many shared a realization that “things would never be the same again” and that disasters were a push for reinvention. Unlike many other studies which have examined the effects of disasters on schools and focussed on building resilience in terms of strengthening physical infrastructure and developing and implementing disaster management plans, preliminary findings of the reported study suggest that building school resilience also requires subtler processes, including relationship building within schools and beyond and working on the conceptually-evasive “spirit” of the school. Organisational resilience is put forward as a useful analytical tool for engaging with the ability of schools to prepare for disasters, productively cope with them and learn and improve from the experience, but with the disclaimer that it should be treated as a flexible tool, rather than a prescription, in order to encapsulate “the peculiar nature of schools as organizations” (Ball, 2012, pp. 7).
ReferencesBall, S. (2012). The micro-politics of the school. Towards a theory of school organisation. Routledge.
Braun, V., Clarke, V. (2021). Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: Sage.
Convery, I., Carrol, B., Balogh, R. (2014). Flooding and schools: experiences in Hull in 2007. Disasters, 39(1): 146-65.
Cooperrider D.L., Srivastva S. Appreciative inquiry in organizational life. In: Passmore W, Woodman R, editors. Research in Organizational Change and Development: An annual series featuring advances in theory, methodology and research. Vol 1. JAI Press Inc; 1987. pp. 129–169.
Doyle, M.D., Lockwood, B., Comiskey, J.G. (2017). Superstorm Sandy and the academic achievement of university students. Disasters, 41(4): 748-763.
Hillmann, J., Guenther, E. (2021). Organizational Resilience: A Valuable Construct for Management Research? International Journal of Management Reviews, 23, 7-44.
Jensen, J.L., Rodgers R. (2001). Cumulating the intellectual gold of case study research. Public
Administration Review, 61(2): 236-246.
Marincioni, F., Fraboni, R. (2011). A baseline assessment of emergency planning and preparedness in Italian universities. Disasters, 36(2): 291-315.
Momani, N.M., Salmi, A. (2012). "Preparedness of schools in the Province of Jeddah to deal with earthquakes risks", Disaster Prevention and Management, 21 (4): 463-473.
Ochola, S.O., Eitel, B., Olago, D. (2010). Vulnerability of schools to floods in Nyando River catchment. Disasters, 34(3): 732-54.
Orru, K., Nero, K., Naevestad, T.O., Schieffelers, A., Olson, A.. Airola, M., Kazemekaityte, A., Lovasz, G., Scurci, G., Ludvigsen, J., Rios Perez, D.A. (2021). Resilience in care organisations: challenges in maintaining support for vulnerable people in Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Disasters, 45(1): 48-75.
Schulze, S.S., Fischer, E.C., Hamideh, S. (2020). Wildfire impacts on schools and hospitals following the 2018 California Camp Fire, Natural Hazards, 104, 901–925.
Soffer, Y., Goldberg, A., Avisar-Shohat, G., Cohen, R., Bar-Dayan, Y. (2009). The effect of different educational interventions on schoolchildren's knowledge of earthquake protective behaviour in Israel. Disasters, 34(1): 205-213.
Tapsell, S.M., Tunstall, S.M. (2008). „I wish I'd never heard of Banbury“: the relationship between 'place' and the health impacts from flooding. Health Place, 14(2): 133-154.
Tierney, K. (2019). Disasters: A sociological approach. Polity Press.
Tipler, K., Tarrant, R., Tuffin, K. (2018). Learning from experience: emergency response in schools, Natural Hazards 90, 1237–1257.
Vakilzadeh, K., Haase, A. (2021). The building blocks of organizational resilience: a review of the empirical literature. Continuity and Resilience Review, 3(1), 1-21.
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