Organizational Justice, Perceived Stress and Leader Support as Predictors of Teachers’ Job Satisfaction

Introduction: Teachers’ job satisfaction which has a positive effect on the quality of education, students, teachers and schools is significant for the successful functioning of schools. On the other hand, the increase in the level of dissatisfaction causes disciplinary problems, inefficiency, job dissatisfaction, alienation from the job, or leaving the job. Therefore, research on teachers’ job satisfaction can help to understand the general and specific aspects of teachers’ job satisfaction, which in turn this information can provide a scientific basis for solving problems.

Methods: The study uses quantitative research methodologies based on a correlational research. The research data obtained the convenience sampling method from 396 teachers who work for public schools in the province of Denizli in Turkey. Multiple regression was used for analysis.

Results: The results of the study showed that organizational justice, perceived stress and leadership support are all significant predictors of teachers’ job satisfaction. The relative importance order of the specified variables in predicting teachers’ job satisfaction is organizational justice, perceived stress and leader support, respectively. Predictor variables account for approximately 50.4% of the total variance in teachers’ job satisfaction.

Discussion: Within the scope of the research, the relationships determined between job satisfaction, organizational justice, perceived stress and leader support are consistent with the results of the research conducted on teachers and other professional groups in the literature. Implications of the study results were discussed in detail.

Limitations: In addition to its contributions to the literature, the research also has some limitations. Basically, correlational research results can be useful to reveal the existing relationships between variables, but it should be emphasized that these relationships are not causal ones. Furthermore, the use of convenience sampling method among non-random sampling methods can be considered as another limitation. However, the consistency of the relationships determined between the variables of the study with the existing literature indicates that the bias due to this limitation is relatively low.

Conclusion: The results of the study indicated that the order of relative importance in educational policies and practices that will take teachers’ job satisfaction into account should be structured as organizational justice, perceived stress and leader support. However, it is thought that holistic approaches that include all variables can be more effective, since variables of organizational justice, perceived stress and leader support are significantly associated with teachers’ job satisfaction.