Factors influencing teachers' job satisfaction in Turkey: Sample of TALIS 2018

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the factors influencing the job satisfaction of lower secondary school teachers in Turkey. The factors influencing teachers' job satisfaction were examined at both the teacher-level and school-level, using the dataset from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 cycle. The sample comprised 196 school principals and 3.952 teachers participated in the TALIS 2018 from 196 lower secondary schools in Turkey. The teacher and school data collection tools employed in the research were obtained from questionnaires administered to teachers (TTGINTT3) and school principals (PCGINTT3), respectively. In the research, multilevel regression analysis using hierarchical linear modelling was employed to analyse the dataset of the TALIS 2018 cycle on the factors influencing teachers' job satisfaction. The results indicated that the majority of teacher-level variables had a significant effect on teachers' job satisfaction, whereas school-level variables did not have a significant effect on it. The research showed that gender, educational status, teaching experience, age, teaching practices, effective professional development, teacher collaboration, social motivation to teach, workplace well-being and stress, teacher-student relationships, and perceived discipline climate were significant predictors of teachers' job satisfaction. The partial conditional model explained 33% of the total variance in teacher-level job satisfaction. On the contrary, the research indicated that school location, school sector, school size, school socio-economic status, academic pressure, school deliquency and violence and school leadership did not have a significant influence on teachers' job satisfaction.