Psychological needs, emotional exhaustion, wellbeing and career commitment of pre-service and experienced teachers.

Abstract

Teaching is difficult, complex, and demanding. Despite recent reforms aimed at improving the professional status of teachers, teacher recruitment, retention, and attrition remain dominant workforce issues worldwide. Coupled with this are the increasing array of reforms to school and school education. While these reforms are aimed at improved outcomes for students, the increase in workload and associated concerns about effects on wellbeing and health more generally, has led to even further increases in teacher turnover and failure to recruit new teachers to the profession. Thus, it is not only important to retain teachers once in the profession, but also to support teachers to allow them to thrive while in their roles. This last point relates to the main aim of this thesis. Research demonstrates that effective educational outcomes occur when teachers are psychologically thriving. There are multiple positive direct and antecedent effects surrounding teachers who are psychologically thriving at work: for example, previous research suggests that teachers who are more engaged, committed, and effective in the workplace have a teaching style that is beneficial to students’ learning and academic outcomes. Despite our current understanding of how teacher psychological functioning can affect student and workplace outcomes, little is known about the ways in which teachers’ contextual experiences differ for pre-service and in-service teachers and the implications for workplace outcomes. This is essential to examine to better support teachers in their training and at work. This research project investigated how the fulfilment of basic psychological needs is associated with teacher emotional exhaustion, career commitment and wellbeing. Self-determination theory (SDT) and job demands-resources theory (JD-R) were used as the theoretical framework for this study. Self-determination theory explains how social and contextual factors support or thwart individuals’ psychological thriving through basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Job demands-resources theory describes how contextual factors help or hinder individuals’ psychological thriving at work. Together, the two theories provide a more complete understanding of teachers’ functioning and its links with important workplace outcomes. Two studies formed this research project. Using a variable-centred approach via structural equation modelling, Study 1 investigated these issues with pre-service teachers (N = 131), examining the ways in which basic psychological needs are associated with emotional exhaustion, wellbeing, and career commitment. The results indicate that for pre-service teachers, psychological needs fulfilment plays a significant role, finding that it has strong and positive associations with wellbeing and career commitment. Study 2 investigated these issues with in-service (experienced) teachers (N = 186) and results indicate that emotional exhaustion (burnout) is a great concern to their wellbeing and that the psychological needs for autonomy and competence are positively associated with career commitment and wellbeing, respectively. Together, the findings show a major role for basic psychological needs fulfilment in understanding teacher career commitment and wellbeing, while also including the need to consider psychological needs as a unique and differentiated construct for pre-service and experienced teachers. This research is a significant step toward advancing the extant knowledge of psychological needs fulfilment of pre-service and experienced teachers. The contribution to the literature of this finding is that basic psychological needs fulfilment for teachers is a unifying construct that can explain wellbeing for pre-service and experienced teachers, despite the differing workplace demands and resources between these two career stages. Suggestions for future research include testing whether both pre-service and experienced teachers can benefit from psychological needs-based job resources that enhance their career commitment and wellbeing and examining how to address these matters in a way that differentiates for teacher career stage