Effect of Professional Development and Self-efficacy on Teachers’ Job Satisfaction in Swedish Lower Secondary School

Abstract

Aim: The intent of this study is to examine the effect of professional development and self-efficacy on job satisfaction of teachers who work at the lower secondary schools in Sweden. The second part of the study is to investigate the internal factors of teachers’ characteristics and external factors of school climate effect on job satisfaction. The Swedish data from Teaching and Learning International 2013 Survey (TALIS 2013) are utilised in this study. Theory: Input-Process-Outcome (IPO) model as the conceptual frameworks is applied in this study. IPO is a model for contextualising teaching and learning conditions and widely applied in education statistical models, which abridges the theory and methods translational gap and helps to conceptualise the settings that is to understand the variables in individual-level and school-level and also to interpret the results. Method: Two statistic software programmes are utilised in this thesis. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0 is used for data management and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) estimation is carried out with the Mplus 7.4. Path analysis are offered to examine each indicator direct or an indirectly influences on teachers’ job satisfaction. Results: Professional development and self-efficacy directly and positively influence teachers’ job satisfaction. Teachers’ constructive beliefs and classroom disciplinary climate show the significant positive indirect teachers’ job satisfaction by affecting professional development and self-efficacy respectively. Gender, age, teacher co-operation, teacher-student relationship and participation among stakeholders have direct and positive effect on job satisfaction. The factors of years working as a teacher in total show negative direct effect on job satisfaction. Gender indirectly and positively influences job satisfaction by impacting teachers’ professional development and through self-efficacy by affecting teachers’ professional development separately. Age negatively and indirectly affects job satisfaction both through constructive beliefs and through self-efficacy by impacting on constructive beliefs. Teacher co-operation has positive and indirect impact on job satisfaction through teacher self-efficacy and professional development respectively. Teacher-student relations indirectly and positively affect job satisfaction through classroom disciplinary climate, through teacher self-efficacy, and through self-efficacy by influencing classroom disciplinary climate. The indirect effects of participation among stakeholders are achieved through classroom disciplinary climate or professional development. By comparing three models, the school environment has a greater impact than teachers’ characteristics on Swedish compulsory teachers’ job satisfaction.