JOB SATISFACTION: DIMENSIONALIZING THROUGH NAURALISTIC INQUIRY

 

Abstract           This article identifies dimensions of the social organization of schools associated with teachers’ job satisfaction: their physical, organizational, economic, political, sociological, cultural, and psychological environments. The inquiry begins by foci of the study, participative observation, dimensionalizing, integrating network. Forty Five government high school teachers were interviewed from Lahore district, Pakistan. Qualitative analysis procedures were used to analyze the materials as data. Theoretical memos indicate that organizational setting affect the most to the job satisfaction among teachers. Of the organizational setting, the most vital was the contribution of autonomy at teachers’ workplace.

 

Job Satisfaction: Dimensionalizing Through Naturalistic Inquiry

 

Concept Indicator

The school as workplace is composed of a constellation of features, each of which contributes to or detracts from teachers satisfaction and their performance. Teachers not only pay attention to the physical components of their workplaces, but they are also concerned with sociological perspectives, political character of the school, organizational processes and procedures, economic conditions, school’s climate, and psychological dimensions of work. People, however, seek to fulfill such drives in all contexts including educational institutions.

 

Most of the research reports agree that ultimately school improvement (effectiveness) depends on good teachers those are ready to do good work. If teachers are satisfied and motivated, they will likely inform and inspire their students. If the teachers are intelligent, skilled and creative in the classroom, students will, possibly, respond with hard work and academic progress.

 

If teachers are pedestrian in their approach to instruction, outstanding candidates reject teaching, if talented teachers abandon the classroom because of absence of work motivation at workplace, public education certainly will continue to pay the price of an uneducated citizenry. How to motivate teachers is, therefore, the fundamental puzzle that remains unsolved. In order to find the answer one can recourse to the literature on job satisfaction-performance link.

 

Related Literature

The literature on job satisfaction-performance has focused on several variables. For instance, Ratsoy (1973) suggested that a high degree of bureaucracy lowers down teachers’ job satisfaction. Miskel, Fevurly, and Stewart (1979), Miskel and Gerhardt (1974) indicated that factors that clarify the teacher’s job help to promote high levels of satisfaction. Similarly, Bacharach and Mitchell (1983) concluded that role ambiguity was a source of dissatisfaction. Hauck (1997) viewed the researchers are not short of data. What they need is understanding. And that means taking interpretive, quantitative research into new areas, and developing new ways for probing the inner truth.

Miskel, McDonald and Bloom (1983) suggested that as school climate becomes more open or participative, the level of teacher’s satisfaction increases. Similarly, work motivation is consistently correlated with job satisfaction. Apparently, teacher needs and other motivator variables such as expectations contribute to teacher satisfaction (Anderson & Iwanick, 1984: Chisolm, Washington, & Thibodeauc, 1980; Firesen, Holdaway, & Rice, 1983; Miskel et al., 1983).

 

Furthermore, job satisfaction is associated with various employee behaviors. Job satisfaction contributes to less absenteeism among school teachers (Bridges, 1980) and is related to stimulation at wok. Engelking (1986) identified sources of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Satisfaction factors included recognition and achievement, whereas dissatisfaction factors are related with lack of achievement by students and teachers, policy and administration, and communication with administrators. Sweeney (1981), Street (1988), Meyer and Rowan (1977) found a positive relationship between teacher’s overall job satisfaction and professional discretion. Knoop and O’Reilly (1978) suggested that perceived school effectiveness is related to satisfaction of teachers with coworkers, with supervision, and with the work itself.

 

Morris (1981) presented evidence that teachers’ job satisfaction is affected by the work environment and strong principal leadership. Nelson (1980) found that leadership styles of school administrators are related to job satisfaction. The quality of teacher-administrator relationship generates higher teacher job satisfaction, and greater teacher participation in decision making contributes to get satisfaction (Mohram, Cooke, & Mohram, 1978). Conversely, lack of participation in decision making is the greatest source of teachers’ dissatisfaction (Holdaway, 1978).

 

Bidwell (1965) has explained schools as organizations with a vague and diffuse goal structure, structional looseness and public vulnerability. He also described that teachers are with a lack of a clear-cut work technology and constrained to some extent by bureaucratic rules and regulations, but who for the most part operate in relative independence from one another and exercise considerable freedom and discretionary power in their work. Packard (1976), Meyer and Rowan (1977) argued that teacher is the legitimate classroom authority and has discretionary power over matters such as instructional processes, pupil control, motivation and evaluation. They further claimed that teachers have justification for a logic of confidence who do not require close supervision.

 

Focus of the Study

School teachers in Pakistan are working in environment which is generally perceived to be unmotivating for them which has resulted into burn-out. In order to know about factors contributing towards teachers job satisfaction as experienced by teachers at their respective workplaces, a naturalistic inquiry was seemed essential to conduct. The study, therefore, was focused to investigate whether aspects of teaching job that contribute to feelings of satisfaction are different in kind from the aspects that contribute to feelings of dissatisfaction.

 

Generative Questions

1.     Are happy, well-cared-for teachers more productive or do they simply feel more entitled and become more recalcitrant?

2.     What is to be gained or lost from making schools more satisfying?

3.     Is there a casual relationship between the quality of schools as workplace and their effectiveness?

4.     What features of the work environment influence teachers satisfaction and dissatisfaction?

5.     What is the particular combination of features that constitutes a supportive and effective work environment for teachers?

 

Core Category: Job Satisfaction -- School Effectiveness

This study endeavored to establish a pattern of relationship between satisfaction and dissatisfaction and in turn, between teachers satisfaction and a criterion of performance. Job satisfaction-school effectiveness act as a core category of workplace that is central to the integration of other categories, like: physical, organizational, sociological, economic, political, cultural and psychological.

 

Process of Dimensionalizing

The issue of dimensions, subdimensions, distinctions and their linkages were revealed during the course of inquiry. Nevertheless, a conceptual frame of integration was sketched out as follows:

 

 

 

 

It was investigated that how teachers were influenced by the array of physical, organizational, sociological, economic, political, cultural, and psychological features of a school setting. These dimensions could further be sub-dimensionalized. Interaction of such dimensions were also analyzed. These variables would informally balancing and tallying of school as workplace that ultimately determined teachers’ job satisfaction and their respective performance that leads to organizational (school) effectiveness.

Integrated Network

On the basis of varied categories of information, an integrated net-work was erected. Theoretical sampling helped to formulate a net-work. A conceptual density of school as a workplace constituted multiplicity of categories and their relationships, as the under mentioned process of integration shows:

 

School as a Workplace
Precoding System

 

Methodology and Instrumentation

This study was concerned to the public (government) schools and high lighted practices there. The researcher had written to 15 headmasters, serving in Lahore district, Pakistan, describing the study and asked them to recommend 3 teachers whom they considered very good teachers (This served as purposive sampling). Transmittal letter explained: “These should be teachers whose work is respected by their colleagues and whose contributions to the school will be missed if they are to leave”. As such 45 teachers were contacted for interview.

 

This study focused on the context of teaching as it is experienced by teachers. Going to the teachers at their workplaces had come to a better understanding of what it meant to work in schools. Of necessity the study was exploratory. Observation of the participants and informal talk with them served as instruments of the study. And it was sought only how teachers experienced their school as workplace. The unstructured interview was basically based on features of workplace (as shown in categories). The researchers probed to what extent teachers’ perspectives, values and insights were similar and where they differed, possibly, what accounted for those differences. Theoretical memoing and its sorting were carried on as the study proceeded.

 

Participative Observation

In concept indicator portion of this research article, factors contributing to satisfaction and dissatisfaction were highlighted. But they are often not very helpful in conceptualizing the criterion of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This problem was handled when researchers went to the teachers at their schools. The researchers, however, made visit to staff rooms of different schools to observe and talk for a while in an informal way with the staff members. The visit enabled them to make educated guesses about the foci of the study and certain features of the schools as a workplace. Certain indicators of job satisfaction emerged as a result of personal observation plus conversation with teachers. Some of these emerging indicators are mentioned below:

Coding of Respondents’ Statements

 

Synthesis and Discussion

Given the main categories of this naturalistic inquiry, a relatively straight forward picture of teacher perceptions of job satisfaction in a school as a workplace emerges. The teaching staff is often viewed that teachers do not favor close supervision of their work. These sentiments seem to be promoted by the psychological, sociological and organizational environments in which they work and the norms of teacher control dominate. It appears that in our schools professional norms do not emphasize teacher autonomy, rather they restrict to advance the values of freedom and a sense of independence.

 

The research evidence seems to support researches of Lortie (1975), Packard (1976), Meyer and Rowan (1977), Okeafor and Teddlie (1988) showing their contentions that occupational ethos of teachers does not favor close supervision of their work. It means no teaching colleague, administrator, or community member may threaten teacher’s authority. The evidence gathered through naturalistic inquiry in this research tends to call for resistance to external efforts to impose change. It is more supportive of change process that recognizes the authority of teachers’ discretionary power. Therefore, it is evident that the teacher is the legitimate classroom authority over matters such as instructional processes, pupil control, motivation and evaluation.

 

The focus of the study revealed that aspects of teaching job that contribute towards satisfaction are different in kinds from the aspects of dissatisfaction. This study showed that teachers have developed their perceptions of the sort of school as a workplace in which they are working based on cues like how organizational procedures are and how their principals behave. These perceptions are then fitted into a fairly stable patterns, patterns which have the clearest meaning with respect to the effects of workplace on teachers’ satisfaction leading to the school effectiveness.

 

Implications

Several implications can be drawn from this study for the administrative and supervisory practices involved in educational administration in the public sector of Pakistan. Some implications are worth considering. Firstly, classroom activities and procedures of the teacher should not be closely supervised unless it is imperative for the improvement of teacher himself. Even in such a case, the supervisor should do so in a non-threatening environment with full understanding and confidence of the teacher.

 

Another implication of this study that may impact working of school as an organization, is the concept of teacher effectiveness and efficiency. Some of the teachers were dissatisfied with the demand of efficiency from the school heads and the emphasis was on tests and accountability of the students. Undue emphasis on percentage of result of the students as an indicator of the teacher effectiveness and efficiency distorts the meaning of education. Overall development of the students is the function of the school and the school heads should remain conscious of this fact all the time.

 

Third implication of this study for public educational administration in Pakistan in today’s setting is about the teachers’ share in the governance of the school. Teacher can legitimately be involved in policies of the school, time-table construction, purchase of school furniture and audio-visual equipment, sports and games etc. Subject to the availability of their spare time after instructional work, teachers must be involved maximally in matters of school governance. Supervisors and educational administrators should never forget that teacher is the most critical member of an academic organization like a school.

 

References

 

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Published      Bulletin of Education and Research. (1998). XIX(1), 31-41. Institute of Education & Research, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. Prof. Dr. Z.A. Khan, IER Punjab University, is the co-author.