The Quality of Teachers' Professional Lives: Teachers and Job Satisfaction

Using data drawn from teachers with 5, 10 and 15 years of experience, this article examines specific aspects of job satisfaction and compares data from the different cohorts of teachers at different stages in their careers. It shows that teachers are very much in agreement about how they rate different facets of teaching in terms of satisfaction and there are particularly high correlations about the most and least satisfying aspects. It also shows that teachers with longer service are overall less satisfied with teaching, and on some specific aspects of satisfaction, differences are statistically significant.Only on two aspects,'recognition of efforts'and 'influence over school policies' are there notable gender differences, women being more satisfied with the former and men with the latter. Interestingly, however, secondary teachers are notably less satisfied than primary teachers with their 'influence over school policies', and primary teachers rank lower their satisfaction with the 'balance between work and personal life'. Whether or not teachers are in promoted posts divides views somewhat with, for example, satisfaction with 'colleagues' views of teaching being much more highly ranked by non-promoted teachers.