No abstract

The article examines the effects of principals’ leadership style (transformational or transactional), principals’ decision-making strategy (autocratic versus participative), and teachers’occupation perceptions on teacher satisfaction from the job. More specifically, it attempts to find out how much of the variation in teachers’job satisfaction can be attributed to their perceptions of their occupation, as compared to their perceptions about their principals’ leadership style and decision-making strategy. A quantitative questionnaire using Likert-type scales was administered to 930 teachers in Israeli schools, of whom 745 responded. Path analysis was used to explain teacher job satisfaction by the exogenous variables. The most salient finding was that teachers’occupation perceptions strongly affected their satisfaction. Principals’transformational leadership affected teachers’satisfaction both directly and indirectly through their occupation perceptions. Implications of the study are discussed in relation to supervisors and principals, as well as to policy makers at the government level.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the distinctive relationships of teacher professional and organizational commitment with participation in decision making and with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The data were collected through questionnaires from a sample of 983 teachers at 25 middle schools and 27 high schools in Israel. The results of the structural equation model confirmed the main hypotheses and depicted distinctive patterns of relationships regarding professional commitment and organizational commitment in schools. First, whereas participation in the managerial domain was positively associated with both the professional and the organizational commitment, participation in the technical domain was positively related with only teachers’ professional commitment. Second, professional commitment was positively associated with OCBtoward the student, whereas organizational commitment was positively associated with all three dimensions of OCB(toward the student, the team, and the organization). Implications of the study findings are discussed in relation to teachers and administrators in schools.

Purpose -The paper aims to investigate the mediating effect of teacher empowerment on the relationship between teachers' perception of their school support and their intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach -Data were collected from a sample of 2,565 teachers affiliated with 153 Israeli elementary schools. A path analysis procedure was employed to test the mediating effect of teacher empowerment on the relation between perceived organizational support and job satisfaction. Findings -The results reveal that teacher empowerment mediated the relations between perceived organizational support and satisfaction, adding more than 30 per cent to the explained variance of each of the satisfaction types. Teacher empowerment shows different relationships when intrinsic versus extrinsic type of satisfaction is considered. The most influential dimension of empowerment predicting teacher intrinsic satisfaction is self-efficacy, a psychologically oriented variable, while the most powerful dimension of empowerment predicting extrinsic job satisfaction is earned status and respect, a sociologically oriented variable.Research limitations/implications -The results reinforce the notion that both types of job satisfaction are two different entities that should be addressed differently. Taking a theoretical perspective, it appears that teacher empowerment should be conceived as a multi-dimensional scale, where its various components are differently associated with the two types of satisfaction. Practical implications -Moreover, it seems that teacher empowerment has a much stronger impact on teacher satisfaction when it takes place in an organizational context that supports individuals. Hence, school leaders need to focus on different qualities of teacher empowerment, depending on the qualities of satisfaction that they wish to promote. Originality/value -Little is known about perceived organizational support in the educational realm. Studying it in relation with teacher empowerment and job satisfaction, key concepts in the school arena, is unprecedented.

No abstract

No abstract

The current study aims at exploring the common means that may improve organizational effectiveness by focusing on two main facets of organizational qualities: teacher commitment and job satisfaction. Data were collected from 841 randomly sampled teachers employed in 118 elementary schools in Israel. A quantitative questionnaire, which included scales measuring organizational and professional commitment, extrinsic and intrinsic satisfaction and organizational and job-related characteristics, was employed. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the single variable that predicted both types of commitment (organizational and professional) and both types of satisfaction (intrinsic and extrinsic) was teachers' perceptions of the fit between one's job demands and abilities. The second most influential predictor was principals' interaction with the teachers. Job-related characteristics had the least impact on teacher's professional commitment and extrinsic satisfaction. The finding, that perceived job fit predicted both commitment and job satisfaction, reinforces the importance of the assumption about the significance of best practice in recruitment and placement processes, which has long been known to be significant in determining professional conduct. Other implications of the findings are discussed, and recommendations are provided to school principals.

The present study is a developmental review that aims to conceptualise, using empirical data, the mediating paths connecting effective school leadership (i.e. transformational leadership and distributed leadership) to teachers’ affective and normative organisational commitment. The review is based on empirical studies on teachers’ organisational commitment published in peer-review journals during two decades. Data analysis resulted in an integrative conceptual model where two central paths – socio-affective factors and teachers’ psychological capital – mediated the impact of effective school leadership on teachers’ organisational commitment. This synthesised model, with its higher-level generalisability, extends the scope of previous research and may stimulate interest in new empirical explorations in effective school leadership research.