DefinePK

Abstract

A high quality teaching staff is the cornerstone of a successful education system. Daily interaction between teachers and students is at the center of the educational process. Attracting and retaining high quality teachers is thus a primary necessity for a strong education system. One step in developing a high quality faculty is to understand the factors associated with teaching quality and retention. One of these factors is job satisfaction. Very often, it is not merely satisfaction with the job, but with the career in general, that is important. With teachers, satisfaction with their careers may have strong implications for student learning. Specifically, a teacher’s satisfaction with his or her career may influence the quality and stability of instruction given to the students. Some researchers argue that teachers who do not feel supported in their work may be less motivated to do their best work in the class- room (Ostroff, 1992; & Ashton & Web, 1986). This would ultimately have an adverse impact on student achievement. In addition, highly satisfied teachers are less likely to leave the teaching profession altogether than those who are dissatisfied with many areas of their work life (Choy et al., 1993). Such departures disrupt the education system and result in the shift of valuable educational resources away from actual instruction towards costly staff replacement efforts. It is not necessary to be a management expert or an economist to understand that if the education managers are spending thousands of rupees and hours of their time to replace teachers who have left, preventing the brain drain in the first place might have saved some of those resources. Because faculty are both the largest cost and the largest human capital resource of an education system, understanding factors that contribute to teacher satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) is essential to improving the information base needed to support a successful educational system.