Executive summary

The present research shows that teachers’ job quality affects their overall life satisfaction; while it suggests that it may be useful to include a strengths assessment as part of the designing process of a high-quality work environment for teachers. 

126 secondary school teachers completed an on-line survey assessing their life satisfaction and their perceptions of job characteristics. In particular, our sample consisted of a diverse population mainly from UK, United Stated and Austalia. Furthermore, there were 78 women and 48 men, age raging from 22-59 (M=42) and years of employment raging form 1-35 (M=16). Moreover, 87 participants were employed in State schools and 36 in Independent ones; while 28 were teaching English, 36 Science/ Maths, 22 Physics/Biology/ Chemistry, 5 Art/Drama, 5 Languages, 10 Technology/ Marketing/ Economics, 7 Psychology/ Sociology and 11 other subjects (library, special education, geography, religious studies). The age of their pupils were 11-18 (P7-P13), but the majority of the participants that completed the study had pupils 16-18 age (P12=116, P13=96)

Our main finding was that the degree to which they perceived their job as self-directed (job autonomy) and important to other people (task significance) could predict almost ¼ of their life satisfaction (23.9%). This finding suggests that teaching itself, as by nature it influences pupils, can enhance teachers’ happiness when teachers are provided with a say on the school curriculum, and are responsible for the way teaching is performed.

Although, teachers’ job autonomy and task significance were the two critical job characteristics in determining teachers’ job quality, and its subsequent association with life satisfaction (Subjective Well-Being), two more job characteristics were associated with teachers’ SWB. Indeed, a significant positive correlation was found between the degree to which their job allowed them to use their skills and talents (skill variety) and their life satisfaction; as well as between the degree to which they had an overall view of all parts of their job (task identity) and their life satisfaction. Other than that, a more general look in teachers’ job quality, as demonstrated by its potential to trigger teachers’ motivation (Motivational Potential Score), also showed a significant correlation with teachers’ life satisfaction. At the same time, our group’s job quality was quite small. These findings suggest that efforts taken to design a high-quality work environment for teachers should target first the most crucial job characteristics; and keep in mind that those ones that teachers relish tend to affect greatly their happiness. Thus, when teachers’ happiness is the target, some critical features of their job may be able to compensate partially for an overall low quality work environment.

A sub-group of 37 teachers completed also a character strengths assessment on-line. This assessment showed teachers’ signature (top 5) strengths and consequently the group’s signature strengths. They are pre-existent capabilities that people have, and when they are able to cultivate and use them in their daily life they are expected to flourish. Our main finding was that teachers tended to exhibit more the so-called knowledge strengths (love of learning, curiosity and judgmental critical thinking) accompanied with fairness and kindness. Moreover, group’s signature strengths tended to associate substantially with teachers’ job autonomy and feedback from their job, and may even have a significant impact on both of them. Regarding teachers’ life satisfaction, although signature strengths were associated with it, it tended to relate more with some specific character strengths (hope, curiosity, zest and love).

These findings suggest that it may be useful to include a strengths assessment in the design process of a high-quality work environment in specific schools. The reason is that the opportunities a school provides to its teachers to use daily their signature strengths may affect the positive or negative perception they may have of their job characteristics. For example, a group of teachers that score highly in judgmental critical thinking are expected to value greatly all opportunities to receive feedback on their performance or information on developments in teaching methods. Thus, a working environment that doesn’t provide adequate feedback opportunities may be perceived as being of poor-quality. Similar it may be the case for all group’s signature strengths. Finally, there may be a link between teachers’ signature strengths, perceptions of job characteristics and life satisfaction when specific strengths have made their way to the top 5. For example, a group whose one of the top strengths is curiosity is expected to value greatly all opportunities provided to use their skills and talents in their area of interest and this may be reflected to their overall happiness. When this group feels that not an adequate number of such opportunities are provided, it may also perceive the overall school environment as being of poor-quality which may be detrimental to their happiness.

Thus, the designing process should try to make sure that school environment is adjacent to teachers’ signature strengths using a strengths assessment.