School Climate and Social-Emotional Learning: Predicting Teacher Stress, Job Satisfaction, and Teaching Efficacy

Teacher's self-efficacy is associated with higher job satisfaction and lower job stress in workload and classroom demands. Collie, Shapka, and Perry (2012) recruited a sample of 664 elementary and secondary school teachers (80% female) in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada for an empirical study to predict work stress, teaching efficacy, and job satisfaction. The goal of the research was to propose an explanatory model to evaluate contextual variables of teacher's perceptions in school climate and their sense of job outcomes.

This study attempted to answer two research questions: Does the way teachers perceive school climate and social-emotional learning (SEL) affect work stress, teaching efficacy, and job satisfaction? And how are stress, efficacy, and job satisfaction interrelated with each other? In this study, teacher stress was measured by nine items from the Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI) to assess two types of stress: stress related to students' behavior and discipline, and stress related to workload. The Teacher's Sense of Efficacy Scale was used for teaching efficacy assessment in three factors: student engagement, classroom management, and instructional strategies. Job satisfaction was measured with four items from the Job Satisfaction Survey. Perceptions of school climate were measured using items taken from the Revised School Level Environment Questionnaire (Collie et al., 2012).

Collie et al. in this study concluded that teachers who perceived better student behavior and motivation had lower classroom stress, higher efficacy, and greater job satisfaction. Also, both workload stress and classroom stress as perceived by teachers were negatively associated to self-efficacy, whereas job satisfaction was positively related to teacher's perceptions of self-efficacy.

Teacher's workload and classroom demand stressors are related to social-emotional learning (SEL) practice and school climate. A significant contribution of the study by Collie et al. (2012) was the examination of social-emotional learning (SEL) practice on teacher's emotional outcomes. Teachers who felt comfortable with SEL and committed to improving SEL perceived less stress and higher teaching efficacy, and more job satisfaction.

This study assessed four factors of school climate: collaboration, student relations, school resources, and decision making. Collaboration referred to the working relationships between teachers at the school. Student relations referred to teacher's perceptions of student's behavior and motivation. School resources referred to the availability of appropriate materials and equipment. Decision making referred to the level of input that teachers have in decision making at the school. These factors reflected classroom demands, job control, and job resources from the perspective of job demands-resources (JD-R) model. According to Collie et al., more research was necessary for further understanding of teaching jobs by considering school climate factors and teacher outcomes simultaneously.

Reference

Collie, R. J., Shapka, J. D., & Perry, N. E. (2012). School climate and social–emotional learning: Predicting teacher stress, job satisfaction, and teaching efficacy. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 1189-1204. doi:10.1037/a0029356