Teachers’ job satisfaction: relationships between attributional style and coping strategies

Job satisfaction may be a pleasant experience but a lack of it has been linked with the national crisis in teacher recruitment and retention difficulties, despite government initiatives aiming to create a high quality, teaching workforce.

What is more, research has shown that teachers with low levels of job satisfaction are more likely to have poor psychological health and perform less effectively in the classroom.

The systematic review described in chapter two synthesises research on factors associated with mainstream secondary school teachers' job satisfaction.

Findings from the systematic review highlight most notably, negative correlations between teachers' job satisfaction and psychological health – such as burnout and emotional exhaustion, and positive correlations between teachers' job satisfaction, motivation at work and organisational commitment.

The study described in chapter three begins with a wider literature search on job satisfaction. Attention is drawn to the links made in research between poor pupil behaviour and teachers' low job satisfaction.

Building on this research, the empirical paper explores links between teachers' attributional style (in relation to explaining poor pupil behaviour), coping strategies and job satisfaction.

It also aims to investigate whether these relationships differ by gender. In doing so, a theoretical model used in the health domain and a quantitative, cross-correlational design is adopted.

In total, 152 mainstream secondary school teachers completed three standardised questionnaires. The results indicated that social support and avoidant coping strategies played a small but significant role in explaining variance in teachers' job satisfaction.

A small relationship between specific attributional style and extrinsic job satisfaction was also found. Some relationships differed by gender and demographic and contextual variables accounted for the highest proportion of variance.

Conclusions and recommendations for future research are made in light of the findings and research limitations.