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Studies show that the success of organizations typically depends on the extent to which leaders promote their employees' job satisfaction and commitment (Kouzes & Posner, 2007). As a result, employees' job satisfaction has received significant attention from business leaders and researchers (Belias & Kouestelios, 2014; Cakmak et al., 2015; Hesli & Lee, 2013; Seifert & Umbach, 2008). Most businesses recognize that enthusiastic, committed, and satisfied employees add value by enhancing customer satisfaction and retention, increasing productivity, and working toward the long-term success of their organizations (Choi, 2016; Cook, 2008). This survey sought to understand Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) faculty perceptions of job satisfaction. Data were collected using questionnaires from tenured and tenure-track faculty. Data analysis used percentage and one-way ANOVA. The study findings showed that most faculty members, including co-workers and supervisors, are satisfied with their jobs. However, faculty satisfaction with pay (PAY) and opportunities for promotion and growth (PRO) were relatively low. The study's findings led to recommendations for enhancing job satisfaction in the context of higher educational institutions (HEIs), specifically at HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions.

The occupational well-being of teachers and their job satisfaction are interconnected, both influencing teacher performance and student well-being. After several years of ongoing economic and financial crises, this cross-sectional descriptive study highlighted several factors that impact the quality of education in relation to these concepts. To achieve this, a scale created through principal component analysis was distributed online. The responses of 297 school teachers, from both the public and private sectors were subjected to analysis using descriptive and logistic regression tests. The findings revealed a strong sense of self-efficacy among teachers, indicating their dedication to providing quality instruction to students on the one hand and helping them overcome challenges on the other. Additionally, the factor of income and financial security emerged as the primary concern for teachers, with approximately 80% of respondents expressing this sentiment. Similarly, collegiality, working conditions, and attitudes towards teaching itself were also sources of concern.

This study aimed to investigate how English teachers' identity (ETI) levels vary based on different sociodemographic backgrounds in Algeria. To this end, a survey research design was adopted by utilizing a questionnaire as research instrument: The first of section elicits information about teachers' background information, including age, professional title, teaching experience, leadership position, salary level, and family condition. The second section is Yan's (2024) 19-item English Teacher Identity Measure (ETIM) to measure the teachers' levels of ETI, which consists of four indicators: self-efficacy (SE), future perspective (FP), teacher belief (TB), and career perception (CP). By using convenience sampling, an online questionnaire was emailed to 170 tertiary EFL teachers from different regions in Western Algeria, and 105 teachers voluntarily participated in this study. 30 of them participated in the pilot study and the remaining 75 teachers' responses were analyzed using SPSS. The data revealed significantly different ETI levels according to years of teaching experience. The findings showed that teachers who scored the lowest ETI levels were PhD holders, lecturers, teachers of the 1980s generation and middle-level leaders. This study informs teacher management and teacher educators of those particular teacher groups that need more support.

This paper seeks to contextualize the profound impact of neoliberal policies on the teaching profession. Employing an intrinsic case study design, this investigation delves into the intricate dynamics experienced by educators in five different Basic High Schools (BHSs) located in Ankara, Türkiye. A comprehensive understanding was gained through semi-structured interviews with 21 teachers and three school counselors at BHSs, supplemented by observations of various processes at the research sites. The qualitative data were content analyzed by coding meaningful segments, generating initial themes related to teachers' classroom and school practices and their engagement with the curriculum, as well as their perceptions of working conditions. After consulting two professors for feedback, the final coding identified two main themes: 'teacher responsibilities' and 'teachers' working conditions.' The study uncovers that the core of teacher responsibilities revolved around preparing students for university entrance examinations, emphasizing the cultivation of test-taking skills. Despite this primary objective, BHS teachers had to implement the national formal curricula, resulting in extended working hours and responsibility overload. Paradoxically, these educators find themselves in a predicament of being inadequately compensated and grappling with issues related to employment rights. In essence, the convergence of extensive workload, insufficient remuneration, and problems regarding employee rights cause the deskilling of teachers and hinders BHS teachers' ability to fulfill their vital roles as transformative and reflective educators. [This article includes an extended summary in Turkish.]

The COVID-19 global pandemic impacted the United States' educational landscape by intensifying the teacher shortage. In particular, significant help is wanted in filling public school vacancies in specialty areas, which has resulted in non-instructional staff teaching in classrooms and impacting school operations. Federal, state, and local education agencies are taking steps to attract teacher candidates and retain current teachers, but will these efforts be enough? Education preparation programs are making changes to their programs to ensure they support teacher candidates while obtaining their initial teaching license. This article will define the teacher shortage, explain the impact of the pandemic, and discuss action steps being implemented to address the teacher shortage. The article will showcase insights from scholarly literature, observations, and document analysis. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the relevant literature exploring actions being implemented at the federal, state, and local levels to address the teacher shortage. By reviewing these steps, education agencies and teacher preparation programs can evaluate their future actionable steps to recruit and retain teachers.

The purpose of this research is to examine the professional commitment levels of special education teachers working in inclusive classes in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), according to different variables. This study used a relational survey model, which is a quantitative research method. A total of 130 special education teachers working in special education schools participated in this research during the 2021-2022 academic year. In the study, "Demographic Information Form" and "Teaching Professional Commitment Scale" were used as data collection tools. According to the findings obtained from the research, no significant differences were found in special education teachers' professional commitment according to age, gender, marital status, professional seniority, support from colleagues, and support from administrators. Significant differences were found in special education teachers' professional commitment according to educational status, job satisfaction, and wage satisfaction. According to the findings obtained as a result of the research, it has been revealed that special education teachers who are satisfied with their job are highly committed to their profession, self-sacrificing and devoted to their students.

Teacher vacancies have been a long-standing issue in U.S. public schools, only made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Vacancies tend to be concentrated in high-poverty, high-minority schools and hard-to-staff subjects like special education and STEM. States have implemented various policies to decrease turnover, including offering teachers bonuses and salary increases. We study one of these policies, a return-to-work policy in North Carolina from 1999-2009, that allowed retired teachers to return to work full-time, earning both their full-time salary and pension benefits concurrently--often resulting in as much as 50% more income than a typical full-time teacher. We document policy take-up and characterize which teachers returned and what schools hired them. The main take-away is that retirees indeed returned under this policy and that high-need schools were disproportionately the ones that hired them.

This paper uses data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and employs multiple regression models to investigate the relationship between teacher salary and educational achievement in mathematics and science across 30 countries. After controlling for alternative wage opportunities and two macroeconomic factors (GDP per capita and educational expenditure as percentage of GDP), the results reveal no significant relationship between teacher salary and educational achievement in mathematics and science. These findings imply the need to look beyond a single policy, such as higher salaries, in favor of policy strategies that address working conditions and other challenges facing new teachers.

This multimodal/multimedia discourse analysis explored institutional practices regarding native and non-native English speaker teachers in five language centers in Medellín, Colombia, as reflected in interviews with coordinators and teachers, language centers' websites, social media, and recruitment materials. Data were analyzed using content and multimodal discourse analysis. Findings unveiled that, in general, these language centers favor native English speaker teachers and discriminate against non-native English speaker teachers in multiple ways, as the former are privileged in job searches, are asked fewer hiring requirements, have more room for negotiation, earn higher salaries, and enjoy more perks.

States and districts share an obligation to provide Multilingual Learners (MLLs) with access to high quality language programs that are proven to be effective in minimizing opportunity gaps between MLLs and non-MLLs. This article reviews how local education agencies (LEAs) allocated their state-issued funding to improve MLL language programs and increase student outcomes. Findings reveal that of the total state-issued MLL funding, LEAs used 88.7% on teacher salaries and benefits, 5.1% on teacher professional development, 4.9% on language program implementation, 0% on language program evaluation, and a small percentage of funding remained unspecified. Collectively, these findings indicate that LEAs did not adhere to the state's funding policies, nor did the state follow their own policies to regulate the LEAs' expenditures. We close with a discussion on how the state can improve their function as an organizational leader and serve as a model for other stakeholders in the shared obligation of the education of MLLs.

This study focused on job satisfaction and motivation factors of schoolteachers from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Primary survey data from 378 teachers in Kabul were used in a randomized conjoint experiment to measure the causal effects of the proposed motivation policy's relevant attributes on teachers' satisfaction. The suggested hypothetical motivation policy comprised salary, number of classes per day, number of students per class, work desk, teacher training, and residential plot. We found that a higher than the current salary, a residential plot, and having fewer than 20 students per class and only three classes per day contributed to teachers' job satisfaction. The proposed teacher motivation policy was widely endorsed by the sample.

Recruitment and retention of agriculture teachers is a major concern in the field of school-based agricultural education (SBAE). A major reason cited for this concern is perceived shortcomings in teacher compensation. To remedy this factor, Illinois implemented an extended contract grant program to provide agriculture teachers with additional compensation for their work outside of their normal contract time, implementing the three-circle model of SBAE instruction. The purpose of our study was to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of Illinois agriculture teachers and school administrators toward the teacher Three Circle Grant program. We designed and administered electronic questionnaires to investigate how agriculture teachers are compensated for their time, perceptions of compensation of agriculture teachers receiving and not receiving the extended contract grant, and agriculture teachers' and school administrators' attitudes towards the Three Circle Grant program. Our findings revealed that the Three Circle Grant is a major factor for agriculture teachers staying in their current teaching positions, and those teachers not receiving it want it in future contracts. We further discovered significant differences between agriculture teachers receiving the grant and those that do not, in their beliefs of adequate compensation for time conducting FFA and SAE responsibilities. Additionally, 80% of administrators stated that the grant is a major factor in recruiting and retaining agriculture teachers in their school districts. While findings were not generalizable beyond the population, there are implications for agricultural teacher preparation programming across America to address the lack of compensation outside of school hours if retention is to be improved.

The purpose of this study was to examine the career trajectories of two teachers in the United States and their decision to leave teaching Spanish. Data for the study emerged from the teachers' narratives about their school-based experiences and the consequences of those experiences on their decisions to reorient their work in the educational community. We adopted the theoretical framework of history in person to analyze the interactions between the teachers' own personal histories with the histories of the institutions in which they taught. Data collection began during the two teachers' student-teaching semester and continued for 5 years after their initial induction into the language teaching profession and included interviews and email communications. The context was North Carolina, a state experiencing a severe teacher shortage and conflicts regarding teacher compensation. Findings highlight the challenges these teachers faced and how their interactions with historically institutionalized struggles were consequential to their professional futures. Implications for research, policy, and teacher preparation are discussed.

Background/Context: High teacher turnover has directed a great deal of scholarly attention toward the connection between teacher retention and teacher working conditions. Prior work has identified a set of key working conditions associated with teacher retention, including supportive school leadership, school safety, a collaborative professional community, a manageable workload, and autonomy. These working conditions are often identified using Likert-based surveys, which allow for the analysis of large and representative samples but cannot fully show the nuance of teachers' experiences. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study examines why teachers leave their positions and how these reasons for leaving appear differently in Likert-style fixed-response questions and free-response questions. This comparison can reveal important distinctions in teachers' understanding of how their working conditions can contribute to their turnover that may be hidden in simpler surveys. Research Design: This study takes advantage of teacher exit surveys administered by a large urban district that included both fixed- and free-response questions about why teachers left their positions. I use a convergent mixed-methods design to examine how reasons for leaving converged and diverged across question types across the entire sample and within individual teachers. Conclusions or Recommendations: I find confirmatory evidence that, when given the opportunity to describe their reasons for leaving in their own words, many teachers identify the same general categories of reasons as identified in Likert questions: school leadership, evaluations, workload, personal reasons, pay, and student behavior. Additionally, teacher free responses add new shades of meaning to our understanding of working conditions. The outsized importance of school leadership, already well established in prior literature, was strongly tied to the influence of school leadership on other aspects of teacher work that are generally considered as separate working conditions. Teachers who left because of student behavior concerns had diverse and often contradictory proposed policy solutions to increase student safety, and teachers who left for personal reasons like retirement or having children were still responsive to more malleable aspects of their work. Finally, many teachers were concerned about their workload, specifically unnecessary work added by school and district policy.

Measuring the appropriate level of teacher compensation for different working conditions requires overcoming a number of empirical challenges, including defining and measuring differences in qualifications, effects of non-wage compensation, financial constraints, and lack of market clearing. We address those challenges in a study of teacher compensation in Alaska's 462 public schools in 53 districts. Each of our three linked empirical specifications produces a set of different compensation adjustments needed to offset differences in working conditions across schools and communities. However, an overall pattern is clear: if districts wish to attract and retain teachers of similar qualifications across all schools, schools serving mainly racially minoritized and low-income populations will need to pay substantially more than they currently do. Estimated required compensation adjustments are quite large in some cases, illustrating the need to address working conditions and other factors that affect teachers' choices to accept and stay in jobs at high-need schools.

Defined benefit (DB) pension plans incentivize "salary spiking," where sharp increases in pay are leveraged into significantly higher levels of retirement compensation. While egregious instances of salary spiking occasionally make headlines, there is little guidance on the definition of salary-spiking behavior or understanding of its prevalence. We develop empirical methods to quantify the prevalence of salary spiking by identifying cases where end-of-career compensation deviates from the expected level of compensation. We apply this method to teacher pension systems in Illinois to assess the prevalence of salary spiking before and after the implementation of a reform designed to dissuade salary spiking.

In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, education policy debates have thrust a heightened focus on the provision of adequate school resources and on educator well-being and turnover, concerns particularly critical for school districts that serve large shares of economically disadvantaged students. In this article, we investigate voter and parent support for school spending initiatives in Missouri by analyzing data from two representative statewide surveys, one of the state's voters and one of the state's parents, focusing on total school spending and spending on teacher salaries. Missouri presents an especially salient setting in which to examine issues of equity in school spending, with below-average school spending and bottom-decile average teacher salaries. In this context, we investigate longstanding predictors of school spending support, including political ideology, alongside new hypotheses, including those pertaining to regional spending inequality and differences between voter and parent constituencies. While political ideology predicted school spending and teacher salary preferences, it did so more strongly for voters than for parents, an important consideration amid heightened political tensions in policy debates. Parent preferences, on the other hand, were more likely to be predicted by opinions of local and statewide school quality. Both voters and parents indicated sensitivity to regional spending inequality with respect to total school spending but not with respect to teacher salaries. Collectively, these findings may inform policymaking efforts in Missouri and similar prevailingly conservative contexts to use constituent preferences to guide legislative efforts.

Previous research has found school working conditions--particularly school leadership--to be linked to teacher retention. At the same time, evidence from the management literature has suggested that obtaining 'buy-in' from staff is critical to employee performance and instigating change. This paper brings these two literatures together, being the first study to explore the relationship between buy-in and teachers' plans to continue working at their current school. The analysis illustrates how teachers who buy into the leadership team's strategy are much more likely to intend to continue working at the school, over and above their views on workload, pay and the quality of their relationships with their colleagues. We conclude by considering what school leaders might do to improve buy-in amongst their staff, while also highlighting areas where further research is needed.

Legal attendance requirements and national declarations establish a social contract between the State and its citizens for the provision of schooling. Any shortage of teachers compromises the ability of the State to meet its contractable obligations. The sovereignty of the social contract is complex as no single body has ultimate responsibility for housing the teaching workforce, but everyone has a stake in it. Empirically focused on the largest school system in the southern hemisphere, the New South Wales public education system (Australia), this paper demonstrates that 90.8% of teaching positions, over 50,000 full-time equivalent posts, are in Local Government Areas where the median rent and house sales price are severely unaffordable on a top-of-the-scale teacher salary. With the system requiring additional teachers to meet increasing enrolments, and housing costs outstripping salaries, many schools not traditionally considered difficult to staff are becoming, if not already, inaccessible for teachers.

What guidance does research provide about how to improve school district performance in the United States? Despite over 30 years of inquiry on the topic of effective districts, existing frameworks are relatively narrow in terms of disciplinary focus (primarily educational leadership perspectives) and research design (primarily qualitative case studies). To bridge this gap for researchers, we first review the theoretical literatures on how districts are thought to affect educational outcomes, arguing that an expanded set of disciplinary perspectives--organizational behavior, political science, economics--have distinct theories about the types of district-level policies that might improve district-wide performance. Using these frameworks as a guide, we next conduct a review of quantitative studies that estimate the relationship between district-level inputs and educational outcomes, finding benefits of policies that cross disciplinary perspectives: higher teacher salaries, data use, and school autonomy and parental choice in the context of district-wide turnarounds. Our review also reveals the need for significant additional causal evidence and provides an inter-disciplinary map of theorized pathways through which district-level policies could influence student outcomes that are ripe for rigorous testing.

The introduction of elementary schools in Sweden (and elsewhere) in the mid-nineteenth century required the quick hiring of many new teachers, which in turn posed challenges about their financing. This paper analyses school inspectors' reports and teachers' journals to illuminate local strategies to provide affordable teaching in the Uppsala region in central Sweden from 1861 to 1910. The feminisation of the teacher's role and the secondary occupations undertaken by (usually) male teachers during this time have not previously been studied together in this context. The main aim of studying these areas together was to contribute to social and economic research in the history of education. The methods were historical and statistical analyses of source materials, with a particular focus on local and regional school developments. The results show that hiring more women to teach in the lower school forms and providing or encouraging side occupations for male teachers were common strategies to make teaching affordable in Sweden during the period studied. In conclusion, it would have been very difficult to implement the elementary school model in Sweden without these strategies. The study confirms the notion of the local character of school funding and provides new empirical evidence of the limitations of state intervention during this period.

This research aims to identify and prioritise the professional needs of novice teachers using the Delphi technique. This qualitative, emergent design employs semi-structured interviews to collect data and the Atride-Sterling style for thematic analysis. Twelve novice teachers with different educational qualifications were purposively selected, and the data were analysed using MAXQDA, which revealed five inclusive themes, 23 organising themes and 79 basic themes. The results indicated that the professional needs of novice teachers, based on their priority, include economic, social, administrative, emotional, and educational needs, which are interconnected. The results also indicate that the needs of novice teachers are in line with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. By capturing holistic data on needs rather than just professional needs, our study's approach has uncovered something obvious but missing from the extant literature on the needs of novice teachers: only when their basic needs are met can they focus on their role as teachers. In the West, where salaries may be lower than similar professions, teachers still make enough to meet their basic needs. In Iran, this is not always the case. This study suggests new priorities in novice teacher support that are essential before professional educational support can be effective.

Similar to many countries in the Western world, educational reforms in Sweden have dramatically changed the educational system in the last few decades. The two reforms that we address in this paper concern "The Career Services for Teachers Reform" and "Teachers Salary Boost" which were implemented at the national level in Sweden in 2013 and 2017, respectively. In this ethnographic study we focus on the design features of these two contemporary reforms and how they impact on both the social and educational life of teachers and school leaders at a secondary high school. However, this change in organisational logic was not only a major digression from the academic tradition and its traditional character of "merit before birth". Due to design features within these reforms, the door to nepotism, real or imagined, was now wide open. Moreover, in the same way as these reforms represent something new to Swedish education, and to the teaching profession in particular, it is just one more step on a road already mapped out via the ongoing neo-liberalisation of society at large.

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to examine whether there really is a shortage of VET teachers, and if so, whether there are links to the salary offered and to the qualifications required. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses three main approaches to examine the narrative of a shortage of VET teachers in Australia. Findings: There was no documented evidence of a VET teacher shortage, beyond a general perception of shortage in line with other occupations due to the post-COVID economic recovery. Salaries for VET teachers were found to compare well with other education occupations and other jobs in the economy. There was no evidence of the required qualifications deterring entry. The main concern appears to be whether VET can adequately train workers for other sectors in shortage. Research limitations/implications: The research did not include empirical survey work and suggests that this needs to be carried out urgently. Practical implications: The research provides evidence that will challenge current assumptions and help in the recruitment of VET teachers. Social implications: It argues for a recognition of the importance of the VET sector beyond its function of serving industry. Originality/value: It highlights ways to make VET teaching a more attractive proposition and to better promote its advantages.