It’s a new term, a new year and a new decade - and a good time to think about what’s important to us in our jobs. 

The struggles around recruitment, retention and wellbeing in the profession are well known. 

But what does the current research on job satisfaction among teachers actually say?

Quick read: Wellbeing: how to be a happy teacher

Quick listen: Why attachment-aware teaching matters for every child

Want to know more? How to plan the perfect lesson

An Australian study - by Dicke et al, due to be published in 2020 - looks at the links between job satisfaction in teachers and senior leaders and student perceptions of school climate and achievement.

The study looks at data from more than 140,000 teachers and almost 9,000 headteachers across eight countries. This was matched to student data from the same schools.

We know that teachers’ feelings of stress are associated with all kinds of negative outcomes, including poor student-teacher relationships, a lack of confidence in one’s efficacy, unhappiness and doubts about staying in the profession.

Student and teacher wellbeing

Dicke and colleagues’ study examines two related, but different, facets of job satisfaction; satisfaction with the profession itself, and satisfaciton with the current work environment - in both teachers and headteachers.

Researchers compared these ratings against student ratings of school climate and attainment in reading and maths.

The main questions posed are: 

• Is there is a relationship between teacher and headteacher satisfaction?
• Does teacher and headteacher job satisfaction relate to student perceptions of school and academic attainment? 
   

Teacher and headteacher satisfaction were assessed using short surveys on satisfaction with the profession (for example “If I could decide again, I would still choose to work as a teacher/school principal”) and with the current working environment (“I enjoy working at this school”). 

Students’ reports on school climate were obtained using ratings of disruptive behaviour in the classroom (“students don’t listen to the teacher”, “there is noise and disorder in the classroom”).

Achievement data was taken from the Programme for International Student Assessment standardised assessments in reading and mathematics carried out at 15 years of age.

The authors also took into account a metric of schools’ socioeconomic context, because most research suggests that schools in high socioeconomic (SES) contexts tend to have better satisfaction and achievement outcomes.

And the results? Teachers’ and headteachers’ levels of satisfaction with their working environment and about the profession are positively and statistically significantly interrelated.

Teacher satisfaction with the working environment was also positively and significantly associated with students’ perceptions of the disciplinary climate and student achievement. At this point, you are shouting that correlation doesn’t equal causation - and you’re quite right.

The data is cross-sectional in nature, so, although it is from a very large and international sample, this limits the conclusions that we can make.

It might be possible to use a longitudinal approach to this work in future, although unlikely at such a large scale.

Regardless, the results of this study should remind us that senior leadership, teachers and students are part of the same ecosystem, and that attitudes towards school are likely to be mirrored across these groups (we don’t know about other important groups like parents or other support staff yet).

There has been a rapidly developing focus on student (and teacher) wellbeing in schools, and this study should serve as an important reminder that we shouldn’t consider students or teachers (or senior leaders) in isolation. 

Attempts at intervention need to take into account how these levels within a school interact, and what whole-school changes might need to happen to support the aims.

Alice Jones is director of the Unit for School and Family Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London