Job satisfaction of mathematics teachers: an empirical investigation to quantify the contributions of teacher self-efficacy and teacher motivation to teach

Abstract The shortage of mathematics teachers necessitates deliberate efforts to retain high-quality ones in many parts of the world. This puts teacher job satisfaction in the spotlight since satisfied teachers are likely to retain their jobs. Thus, the purpose of this study is twofold. The first is to quantify the influence of teacher self-efficacy and teacher motivation on teacher job satisfaction. The second is to investigate the patterns of changes in teacher job satisfaction across gender, age, and work experience. Using both descriptive and inferential statistics, we analysed the dataset of 1304 Norwegian mathematics teachers to address two research questions. The results showed that both teacher self-efficacy and social utility motivation have a significant influence on teacher job satisfaction with an additional mediating role of teacher self-efficacy. Contrary to our expectations, personal utility motivation has a negative influence on teacher job satisfaction. We found that women had significantly higher teacher job satisfaction than men. Also, we found a high-low–high pattern of changes in teacher job satisfaction in ascending order of teachers’ age and work experience. One practical implication of these findings is exposing an appropriate time (i.e. at a low stage of job satisfaction) for interventions targeted at teacher job satisfaction to be effective. We discussed other implications of these findings concerning which constructs, gender, and age groups of teachers to prioritise for interventions that would reinforce the job satisfaction of mathematics teachers.