Why do I teach? Teachers' instrumental and prosocial motivation predict teaching quality across East and West

BACKGROUND

Individuals pursue teaching careers for numerous reasons, such as for instrumental or prosocial purposes.

AIMS

This study examined the personal (instrumental motivation) and social (prosocial motivation) utility of teaching as predictors of teaching quality in terms of clarity of instruction, classroom management, and cognitive activation.

SAMPLE

We used data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, which included 50,595 teachers from 1252 schools in 10 countries and regions.

METHODS

We performed a series of regression analyses to test a model of instrumental and prosocial motivation to predict three indicators of teaching quality (clarity of instruction, classroom management, and cognitive activation) while controlling for demographic characteristics (age, sex, educational level, and teaching experience). We examined this model in countries and regions from Eastern (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Shanghai and Taipei) and Western (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States of America) cultures.

RESULTS

Results demonstrated that instrumental motivation predicted clarity of instruction in the East and classroom management in both the East and West; prosocial motivation, however, was a more consistent predictor of all indicators of teaching quality, except classroom management in the West, across cultures.

CONCLUSION

Teachers' prosocial motivation to benefit others and contribute to society must be considered to understand teaching quality across various cultural contexts. Implications for theory, practice and policy are discussed.

Does Public Service Motivation Affect Teacher Satisfaction From the Perspective of Urban and Rural Dual Structure? Empirical Analysis Based on Estonia TALIS 2018 Data

In recent years, basic education in Estonia has achieved balanced development despite the imbalance of structure and regional factors, and this phenomenon has made the Estonian educational system a general interest of international scholars. Based on the data from the 2018 Teacher Teaching International Survey (TALIS) database, this research divides 3,004 respondents in Estonia into rural teachers and urban teachers and explores the impact of public service motivation on teacher satisfaction from the perspective of urban-rural dual structure through the grouping and comparison of ordered regression models. The study finds that the three dimensions of public service motivations in Estonia will positively affect teacher satisfaction and that the influence coefficient of contribute to the society and the tendency to participate in education policies on teacher satisfaction is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. In addition, the satisfaction of rural teachers in Estonia will decrease with the age of teachers, and the satisfaction of male teachers will be significantly lower than the satisfaction of female teachers, while the satisfaction of urban teachers will decrease with the improvement of academic qualifications. In terms of the implications, on the one hand, Estonia's education policy attempts to solve the imbalance between the regional and teacher structure through subsidies and incentives; on the other hand, Estonia's education policy uses measures such as multidimensional evaluation, multichannel feedback, and local democratization to increase the teacher's participation as well as their satisfaction.

Kernel Causality Among Teacher Self-Efficacy, Job Satisfaction, School Climate, and Workplace Well-Being and Stress in TALIS

Teachers play an important role in the educational system. Teacher self-efficacy, job satisfaction, school climate, and workplace well-being and stress are four individual characteristics shown to be associated with tendency to turnover. In this article, data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 teacher questionnaire are analyzed, with the goal to understand the interplay amongst these four individual characteristics. The main purposes of this study are to (1) measure extreme response style for each scale using unidimensional nominal response models, and (2) investigate the kernel causal paths among teacher self-efficacy, job satisfaction, school climate, and workplace well-being and stress in the TALIS-PISA linked countries/economies. Our findings support the existence of extreme response style, the rational non-normal distribution assumption of latent traits, and the feasibility of kernel causal inference in the educational sector. Results of the present study inform the development of future correlational research and policy making in education.

Exploration of Predictors for Korean Teacher Job Satisfaction via a Machine Learning Technique, Group Mnet

Despite the high academic achievements of Korean students in international comparison studies, their teachers' job satisfaction remains below the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. As job satisfaction is one of the major factors affecting student achievement as well as student and teacher retention, the identification of the most important satisfaction predictors is crucial. The current study analyzed data from the OECD 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) via machine learning. In particular, group Mnet (a penalized regression method) was employed in order to consider hundreds of TALIS predictors in one statistical model. Specifically, this study repeated 100 times of variable selection after random data-splitting as well as cross-validation, and presented predictors selected 50% of the time or more. As a result, 18 predictors were identified out of 558, including variables relating to collaborative school climates and teacher self-efficacy, which was consistent with previous research. Newly found variables to teacher job satisfaction included items about teacher feedback, participatory school climates, and perceived barriers to professional development. Suggestions and future research topics are discussed.