Teacher Job Satisfaction in High-Performing Systems: A Multi-Level Study of Teacher, Classroom, and School Factors Using TALIS 2013 Surveys

Teacher job satisfaction plays a key role in influencing a quality teaching workforce and student success. This article presented an analytical framework comprising teacher, classroom and school factors, and tested it by applying a three-level modeling technique with data drawn from 11 high-performing systems that participated in Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013. The quantitative results show that: (1) at the teacher level, higher self-efficacy is associated with higher job satisfaction; more effective professional development and collaboration are associated with higher job satisfaction; mid-career teachers tend to be the least satisfied group compared with young and old teachers. (2) at the classroom level, teaching larger classes is associated with lower satisfaction, while teaching classes with higher percentage of low achievers or low socioeconomic students is associated with lower satisfaction; (3) at the school level, student-teacher relationship is significantly positively associated with job satisfaction. The article concludes with implications for policy makers and educators across countries

Leadership Influence on Collective Teacher Efficacy in Multi-cultural Teams: A Mixed-Methods Study

As evidence for positive effects of collective teacher efficacy on student performance and teacher well-being grow, increasing efforts have been made worldwide to understand how teachers’ beliefs in the team’s capacity form in schools. This study adopts a mixed-methods approach; 90 teachers from seven international schools in China participated in the survey, and eight teachers from these schools joined focus group interviews. This paper seeks to understand the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of instructional school leadership and collective efficacy, and how individual leaders’ character strength of encouragement and structural factors, including school levels and cultural dimensions, affect the relationship. Quantitative results show a significant correlation between instructional school leadership and collective teacher efficacy. Power distance is a significant moderator in the relationship, but school-level and cultural dimension of collectivism are not. Although leaders’ character strength of encouragement is not a significant mediator in the influence of instructional school leadership on collective teacher efficacy, it significantly mediates the influence of collective efficacy on teachers’ perceptions of instructional school leadership. Focus group participants recognized leadership as a critical factor in the formation of collective teacher efficacy at the school level and identified four categories of leadership practices shaping the formation: Developing School Learning Climate, Defining School Mission, Supervising and Evaluating Instruction, and Leading by Example. Findings, study limitations, and implications for future research and practice are further discussed

Developments of Professional Learning Communities and Challenges for Principals in Chinese Urban Middle Schools

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have seen a rapid spread all around the world over the past 30 years. Since then it has been proved that they can improve teaching quality and thereby the achievement of students, and so PLCs have attracted increasing attention especially from education systems. In China, PLCs have been developed vigorously within schools since the implementation of the ‘New Curriculum Reform’ in 2000. However, the west has paid scant attention to and were not familiar with them since most research in this field in China was published in Chinese.Furthermore, PLCs are influenced by contextual and cultural factors, and therefore PLCs in Chinese education systems are different from those in Anglo-American settings due to long-standing cultural differences, which require consideration. Therefore, this research will investigate the PLCs in China that may be of interest. Many recent studies have shown that, although PLCs have made significant progress in Chinese urban middle schools through the enthusiastic efforts of educators and scholars, there are still several barriers. The primary purpose of this research is to review the development of PLCs and additionally to analyse the challenges faced by the principals

The Associations Between the Perception of Helpfulness of Teacher Induction Programs, Teacher Self-Efficacy, and Anticipated First-Year Teacher Retention in Shanghai Public Primary Schools

The purpose of the study was to: (a) determine to what extent the formalized teacher induction programs (TIPs) in Shanghai are perceived to be helpful for first-year public primary school teachers; (b) measure teacher self-efficacy and anticipated job retention of first-year teachers in Shanghai public primary schools; and (c) examine the degree to which these perceptions of helpfulness, teacher self-efficacy, and anticipated job retention are associated. In this study, retention is defined as remaining in a public primary school in Shanghai. Shanghai TIPs are one-year long, mandatory programs for first-year teachers in Shanghai public primary schools. The conceptual framework of TIPs includes four main components (orientation, mentoring, professional development, and teacher evaluations) as found in Horn, Sterling, and Subhan’s (2002) high-quality teacher induction program component model. An on-line survey was completed by 408 participants who held a bachelor’s degree or higher along with a teaching credential and who were within their first year of teaching in a public primary school located in Shanghai. They provided their demographic information and responded to items on a perception of TIP helpfulness scale (on orientation, mentoring, professional development, and teacher evaluations), the Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES-SF; for student engagement, for instructional strategies, and for classroom management), and an anticipated first-year teacher retention scale. Results of the study include: (1) Overall, Shanghai public primary school teachers perceived the level of TIP helpfulness to be relatively high; however, the levels of helpfulness varied across the four components (orientation, mentoring, professional development, and teacher evaluation); (2) Teacher self-efficacy regarding instructional strategies was reported to be higher than efficacy regarding classroom management and student engagement; (3) The majority of first-year teachers expressed agreement with plans to stay in the same position; (4) Perceptions regarding TIP helpfulness, overall, were not found to significantly correlate with teacher self-efficacy, overall; (5) To a limited extent (r= -.142, p \u3c .01) self-efficacy scores negatively correlate with anticipated retention such that those expressing higher levels of teacher self-efficacy are those with lower anticipated teacher retention (as a public primary school teacher in Shanghai) scores, whereas a positive association was hypothesized; (6) The perception of overall TIP helpfulness was a statistically significant predictor of anticipated teacher retention; and (7) There is insufficient evidence to suggest that teacher self-efficacy mediates the effect of Shanghai TIP helpfulness, overall, on anticipated teacher retention. Additional findings, explanations, implications, and suggestions for future research are also discussed for Shanghai public schools