Teacher job satisfaction across 38 countries and economies: An alignment optimization approach to a cross-cultural mean comparison

The purpose of this study is to compare latent means of job satisfaction across participating countries in the 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey. The mean comparison of this nature is sparse in the literature due to lack of cross-cultural construct validity of job satisfaction scales. We applied an alignment approach that can optimize this construct validity to compare the latent mean of 153,682 teachers across 48 countries. We found that Austria, Chile, Spain, Canada, and Argentina form the top countries with highly job-satisfied teachers while the least job-satisfied teachers are from Bulgaria, England, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Malta. Our findings provide potential cues to policymakers/education stakeholders on which country to emulate such that teacher job satisfaction can be improved.