A study of teacher job satisfaction, work-related stress and customer focus in a suburban school district.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examined job satisfaction, work-related stress, and customer focus in a suburban public school. The purpose of the study was to determine if staff at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in the Trenton Public Schools were satisfied with their jobs, the extent to which they were experiencing work-related stress, and their perceptions of customer focus across the school district.
A nonexperimental, descriptive research design was used as the research design in this study. Primary data collection tools included Customer Focus in Education (CFE; Pando, 1992), Quality of Teacher Worklife (QTW; Harringon & Plesma, 1985) and a short demographic survey developed specifically for this study. Both the CFE and QTW instruments had been used extensively in previous research and have documented reliability and validity.
The setting for this study was the Trenton Public Schools that included four elementary, one middle and one high school. A total of 178 teachers and staff for the listed buildings were surveyed, with 84 completing and returning for a response rate of 42.4%.
Participants were generally satisfied with their jobs and were not experiencing excessive work-related stress. Their perceptions of the customer focus of the schools were significantly above the neutral point, indicating they felt the district fostered a customer focus approach with students and parents. Significant differences in the use of customer focus was found between middle and high school staff in regard to the affective environment as a measure of customer focus. No significant differences were found by building level for job satisfaction or work related stress. Professional characteristics of the participants were not significant predictors of job satisfaction or work-related stress. When teachers and staff were compared on job satisfaction, work-related stress, and customer focus, no statistically significant differences were found.
The conclusions indicated that because teachers were generally satisfied and had low levels of work-related stress, they were better able to focus their attention on students. The implications for practice offered strategies that other school districts could use to improve job satisfaction and reduce teacher stress.