Job satisfaction among newly qualified teachers in Scotland

The ESRC TLRP Early Professional Learning (EPL) project is investigating the processes and outcomes of learning to become a teacher in the probationary year. One of the five learning outcomes is job satisfaction. Most people in employment consciously experience a degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their job. Moreover, they tend to be more satisfied with some aspects of their job than others. There are many reasons, ethical and utilitarian, why probationers should experience a high level of job satisfaction during their first year of teaching. This paper describes the development of an instrument to measure the job satisfaction of probationary teachers. No probationer-specific instrument has previously been constructed.The dimensions of the probationer’s job that provoked feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction were identified by a team of six teacher researchers who tracked a sample of 18 probationers in their own schools and carried out in-depth interviews with them. A psychometric instrument was constructed, based on the list of 40 job dimensions identified in this way, and administered to a sample of 150 probationers in Scotland. A single-item measure of satisfaction with the job as a whole was also administered.