Mapping the job satisfaction of teachers in Mauritius across their career cycles.

Abstract

The job satisfaction of teachers has been a topic of research for decades, and extensive knowledge has been gained over the years. Globally, the role, tasks and challenges that teachers face in their daily work have changed drastically over the years, continuously impacting their job satisfaction throughout their careers. Similar changes have been observed in the Mauritian context. In Mauritius, teachers have to change schools every five years, which is associated with various factors that affect their job satisfaction at different points in their careers. Many studies on job satisfaction are snapshots of the phenomenon at a particular point in time. Little is known about how job satisfaction changes over the course of a specific teacher’s career. This study looked at job satisfaction from a dynamic perspective and examined the job satisfaction of experienced teachers retrospectively. In this sense, the job satisfaction of teachers with at least twenty years of professional experience was analysed using a convergent mixed-methods design. Herzberg’s (1966) two-factor theory and Vroom’s (1964) expectancy theory formed the theoretical framework of the study. Three sets of data were collected to answer the three research objectives that guided the study. The quantitative data collected from 126 state secondary school teachers in four educational zones of Mauritius using an adapted version of the Teachers' Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (Lester, 1987) showed that teachers generally tend to maintain medium to high levels of job satisfaction. However, fluctuations occur at the beginning, middle and end of their careers. The main factors influencing teachers’ job satisfaction include the job itself, teachers’ health and well-being, the category of students and the type of school. Eleven teachers took part in the qualitative part of the study and described their experiences over 20 years using graphical representations and in-depth semi-structured interviews. Personal characteristics, autonomy, control and contextual factors such as transfers, school management, collegiality and student behaviour were found to be additional factors influencing job satisfaction. While the study confirms several factors that affect job satisfaction, the focus on long-term job satisfaction extends the current understanding of its inter- and intra-individual variability. The analysis of the data also led to the formulation of a new model of job satisfaction, termed the "elastic model" of job satisfaction.