Hallo to everybody,

 Some  months ago I posted in this list my call-for-participants for my MSc
(in Occupational Psychology) dissertation on "Secondary school teachers' job
characteristics and subjective well-being. Exploring potential links with
the occupation pattern  of character strengths". This on-line project took
place from June till August.

For those interested I post below the executive report summary of this research

Executive summary

The present research demonstrated that teachers’ job quality affects their
overall life satisfaction; while it suggests that it may be useful to
include a strengths assessment as part of the designing process of a
high-quality work environment for teachers.

126 secondary school teachers completed an on-line survey assessing their
life satisfaction and their perceptions of job characteristics. The main
finding was that the degree to which teachers' perceived their job as
self-directed (job autonomy) and important to other people (task
significance) could predict almost ¼ of their life satisfaction (23.9%).
This finding suggests that teaching itself, as by nature it influences
pupils, can enhance teachers’ happiness when teachers are provided with a
say on the school curriculum, and are responsible for the way teaching is
performed.

Although, teachers’ job autonomy and task significance were the two critical
job characteristics in determining teachers’ job quality, and its subsequent
association with life satisfaction (Subjective Well-Being), two more job
characteristics were associated with teachers’ SWB. Indeed, a significant
positive correlation was found between the degree to which their job allowed
them to use their skills and talents (skill variety) and their life
satisfaction; as well as between the degree to which they had an overall
view of all parts of their job (task identity) and their life satisfaction.
Other than that, a more general look in teachers’ job quality, as
demonstrated by its potential to trigger teachers’ motivation (Motivational
Potential Score), also showed a significant correlation with teachers’ life
satisfaction. 

At the same time, our group’s job quality was quite small. These findings
suggest that efforts taken to design a high-quality work environment for
teachers should target first the most crucial job characteristics; and keep
in mind that those ones that teachers relish tend to affect greatly their
happiness. Thus, when teachers’ happiness is the target, some critical
features of their job may be able to compensate partially for an overall low
quality work environment.

A sub-group of 37 teachers completed also a character strengths assessment
on-line. This assessment showed teachers’ signature (top 5) strengths and
consequently the group’s signature strengths. They are pre-existent
capabilities that people have, and when they are able to cultivate and use
them in their daily life they are expected to flourish. 

Our main finding was that teachers tended to exhibit more the so-called
knowledge strengths (love of learning, curiosity and judgmental critical
thinking) accompanied with fairness and kindness. Moreover, group’s
signature strengths tended to associate substantially with teachers’ job
autonomy and feedback from their job, and may even have a significant impact
on both of them. Regarding teachers’ life satisfaction, although signature
strengths were associated with it, it tended to relate more with some
specific character strengths (hope, curiosity, zest and love).

These findings suggest that it may be useful to include a strengths
assessment in the design process of a high-quality work environment in
specific schools. The reason is that the opportunities a school provides to
its teachers to use daily their signature strengths may affect the positive
or negative perception they may have of their job characteristics. For
example, a group of teachers that score highly in judgmental critical
thinking are expected to value greatly all opportunities to receive feedback
on their performance or information on developments in teaching methods.
Thus, a working environment that doesn’t provide adequate feedback
opportunities may be perceived as being of poor-quality. Similar it may be
the case for all group’s signature strengths. 

Finally, there may be a link between teachers’ signature strengths,
perceptions of job characteristics and life satisfaction when specific
character strengths have made their way to the top 5. For example, a group
whose one of the top strengths is curiosity is expected to value greatly all
opportunities provided to use their skills and talents in their area of
interest and this may be reflected to their overall happiness. When this
group feels that not an adequate number of such opportunities are provided,
it may also perceive the overall school environment as being of poor-quality
which may be detrimental to their happiness.