Implementing Intervention Design Program to Assess Teachers’ Job Satisfaction in Vocational and Technical College in Anhui, China
Keywords:
Job Satisfaction, Career Development, Employee Engagement, Talent Management, Work EnvironmentAbstract
Purpose: This study explores the factors influencing teachers' job satisfaction at the Anhui Institute of Vocational Technology. By investigating the relationship between five key variables and teachers' job satisfaction, it seeks to provide comprehensive theoretical insights and practical guidance for educational institutions. Research Design, Data, and Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted among 100 teachers at the Anhui Institute of Vocational Technology. The research employed the Index of Item-Objective Congruence (IOC) to evaluate validity and conducted a pilot test (n=50) to assess reliability using Cronbach's Alpha. Following this, a group of 30 teachers engaged in a 15-week Intervention Design Implementation (IDI). Subsequently, the quantitative data collected from pre-IDI and post-IDI evaluations underwent paired-sample t-test analysis for comparison. Results: The study found significant correlations between career development, employee engagement, emotional stability, talent management, work environment, and teachers’ job satisfaction. Specifically, career development opportunities, employee involvement in decision-making, emotional stability, effective talent nurturing, and a positive work environment were key drivers of increased job satisfaction among teachers. Conclusion: Recommendations include formulating robust career development frameworks, fostering greater employee participation, prioritizing teachers' emotional well-being, optimizing talent management protocols, and improving working conditions. Addressing these factors holistically can create an environment conducive to increased teacher satisfaction, thus fostering comprehensive school development.
References
Abdirahman, H. I. H., Najeemdeen, I. S., Abidemi, B. T., & Ahmad, R. B. (2018). The relationship between job satisfaction, work-life balance, and organizational commitment on employee performance. Academic Journal of Economic Studies, 4(3), 12-17.
Akkermans, J., Brenninkmeijer, V., Huibers, M., & Blonk, R. W. (2013). Competencies for the contemporary career: Development and preliminary validation of the career competencies questionnaire. Journal of Career Development, 40(3), 245-267. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894845312467
Aldrup, K., Carstensen, B., Köller, M. M., & Klusmann, U. (2020). Measuring teachers’ social-emotional competence: Development and validation of a situational judgment test. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 892. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00892
Alshmemri, M., Shahwan-Akl, L., & Maude, P. (2017). Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Life Science Journal, 14(5), 12-16.
Aziri, B. (2011). Job satisfaction: A literature review. Management research & practice, 3(4), 1-10.
Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2017). Job demands–resources theory: Taking stock and looking forward. Journal of occupational health psychology, 22(3), 273-285. https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000056
Bakker, A. B., Schaufeli, W. B., Leiter, M. P., & Taris, T. W. (2008). Work engagement: An emerging concept in occupational health psychology. Work & stress, 22(3), 187-200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678370802393649
Bakker, A. B., Van Der Zee, K. I., Lewig, K. A., & Dollard, M. F. (2006). The relationship between the big five personality factors and burnout: A study among volunteer counselors. The Journal of social psychology, 146(1), 31-50.
https://doi.org/10.3200/socp.146.1.31-50
Blustein, D. (2013). The psychology of working: A new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy (1st ed.). Routledge.
Bolles, R. N. (2009). The 2009 what color is your parachute?: a practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers. Random House Digital.
Boudreau, J. W., & Ramstad, P. M. (2005). Talentship and the evolution of human resource management: From professional practices to strategic talent decision science. Human Resource Planning Journal, 28(2), 17-26.
Boudreau, J. W., & Ramstad, P. M. (2007). Beyond HR: The new science of human capital (1st ed.). Harvard Business Press.
Boyd, D., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2005). The draw of home: How teachers' preferences for proximity disadvantage urban schools. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management: The Journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, 24(1), 113-132. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.20072
Brown, S. D., & Lent, R. W. (2004). Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (1st ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Cappelli, P. (2008). Talent on demand: Managing talent in an uncertain age (1st ed.). Harvard Business School Press.
Cascio, W. F., & Aguinis, H. (2008). Research in industrial and organizational psychology from 1963 to 2007: Changes, choices, and trends. Journal of applied psychology, 93(5), 1062. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.5.1062
Chandani, A., Mehta, M., Mall, A., & Khokhar, V. (2016). Employee engagement: A review paper on factors affecting employee engagement. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(15), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.17485/ijst/2016/v9i15/92145
Christian, M. S., Garza, A. S., & Slaughter, J. E. (2011). Work engagement: A quantitative review and test of its relations with task and contextual performance. Personnel psychology, 64(1), 89-136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2010.01203.x
Cobb-Clark, D. A., & Schurer, S. (2012). The stability of big-five personality traits. Economics Letters, 115(1), 11-15.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2011.11.015
Collings, D. G., & Mellahi, K. (2009). Strategic talent management: A review and research agenda. Human resource management review, 19(4), 304-313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2009.04.001
Collings, D. G., Scullion, H., & Vaiman, V. (2015). Talent management: Progress and prospects. Elsevier.
Correa, T., Hinsley, A. W., & De Zuniga, H. G. (2010). Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use. Computers in human behavior, 26(2), 247-253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2009.09.003
Crossman, A., & Harris, P. (2006). Job satisfaction of secondary school teachers. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 34(1), 29-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143206059538
Eid, M., & Diener, E. (2004). Global judgments of subjective well-being: Situational variability and long-term stability. Social indicators research, 65, 245-277. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:soci.0000003801.89195.b
Goestjahjanti, S., Novitasari, D., Hutagalung, D., Asbari, M., & Supono, J. (2020). Impact of talent management, authentic leadership and employee engagement on job satisfaction: Evidence from south east Asian industries. Journal of Critical Reviews, 7(19), 67-88.
Gross, J. J., & Thompson, R. A. (2006). Emotion regulation: Conceptual foundations (1st ed.). Handbook of emotion regulation.
Guenole, N., Ferrar, J., & Feinzig, S. (2017). The power of people: Learn how successful organizations use workforce analytics to improve business performance (1st ed.). FT Press.
Hafez, E., AbouelNeel, R., & Elsaid, E. (2017). An exploratory study on how talent management affects employee retention and job satisfaction for personnel administration in Ain Shams University Egypt. Journal of Management and Strategy, 8(4).
Hakanen, J. J., Bakker, A. B., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2006). Burnout and work engagement among teachers. Journal of school psychology, 43(6), 495-513. https://doi.org/10.5430/jms.v8n4p1
Hakanen, J. J., Schaufeli, W. B., & Ahola, K. (2008). The Job Demands-Resources model: A three-year cross-lagged study of burnout, depression, commitment, and work engagement. Work & stress, 22(3), 224-241. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678370802379432
Herzberg, F. (2017). Motivation to work (1st ed.). Routledge.
Hills, P., & Argyle, M. (2001). Emotional stability as a major dimension of happiness. Personality and individual differences, 31(8), 1357-1364. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869(00)00229-4
Hirschi, A., Niles, S. G., & Akos, P. (2011). Engagement in adolescent career preparation: Social support, personality and the development of choice decidedness and congruence. Journal of adolescence, 34(1), 173-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2009.12.009
Huselid, M. A., Becker, B. E., & Beatty, R. W. (2005). The workforce scorecard: Managing human capital to execute strategy (1st ed.). Harvard Business Press.
Ilgen, D. R., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M., & Jundt, D. (2005). Teams in organizations: From input-process-output models to IMOI models. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 56, 517-543. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070250
Johnson, D. P., & Whisman, M. A. (2013). Gender differences in rumination: A meta-analysis. Personality and individual differences, 55(4), 367-374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.03.019
Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2001). Relationship of core self-evaluations traits-self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability-with job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of applied psychology, 86(1), 80-92. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.1.80
Judge, T. A., Van Vianen, A. E., & De Pater, I. E. (2004). Emotional stability, core self-evaluations, and job outcomes: A review of the evidence and an agenda for future research. Human performance, 17(3), 325-346. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203764398-4
Kahn, W. A., & Fellows, S. (2013). Employee engagement and meaningful work. In B. J. Dik, Z. S. Byrne, & M. F. Steger (Eds.), Purpose and meaning in the workplace (pp. 105-126). American Psychological Association.
Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D., Judge, T. A., & Scott, B. A. (2009). The role of core self-evaluations in the coping process. Journal of applied psychology, 94(1), 177-195. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013214
Katz, R. L. (2009). Skills of an effective administrator (1st ed.). Harvard Business Review Press.
Klassen, R. M., & Chiu, M. M. (2010). Effects on teachers' self-efficacy and job satisfaction: Teacher gender, years of experience, and job stress. Journal of educational psychology, 102(3), 741-756. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019237
Lawler, E. E. (2007). Built to change: How to achieve sustained organizational effectiveness. Strategic Direction, 23(4). https://doi.org/10.1108/sd.2007.05623dae.001
Lawler, E. E., & Worley, C. G. (2011). Management reset: Organizing for sustainable effectiveness (1st ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Lester, P. E. (1987). Development and factor analysis of the teacher job satisfaction questionnaire (TJSQ). Educational and psychological measurement, 47(1), 223-233. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164487471031
Lodi-Smith, J., & Roberts, B. W. (2007). Social investment and personality: A meta-analysis of the relationship of personality traits to investment in work, family, religion, and volunteerism. Personality and social psychology review, 11(1), 68-86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868306294590
Macey, W. H., & Schneider, B. (2008). The meaning of employee engagement. Industrial and organizational Psychology, 1(1), 3-30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-9434.2007.0002.x
Markos, S., & Sridevi, M. S. (2010). Employee engagement: The key to improving performance. International journal of business and management, 5(12), 89. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v5n12p89
Meyers, M. C., & Van Woerkom, M. (2014). The influence of underlying philosophies on talent management: Theory, implications for practice, and research agenda. Journal of World Business, 49(2), 192-203.
Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H., & Axelrod, B. (2014). War for talent–time to change direction. KPMG International, 1-2.
Morgeson, F. P., Delaney-Klinger, K., & Hemingway, M. A. (2005). The importance of job autonomy, cognitive ability, and job-related skill for predicting role breadth and job performance. Journal of applied psychology, 90(2), 399. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.2.399
Morgeson, F. P., & Humphrey, S. E. (2006). The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work. Journal of applied psychology, 91(6), 1321-1339. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.6.1321
Niven, K., Totterdell, P., & Holman, D. (2009). A classification of controlled interpersonal affect regulation strategies. Emotion, 9(4), 498-509. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015962
Parkins, R. (2012). Gender and emotional expressiveness: An analysis of prosodic features in emotional expression (1st ed.). Griffith University Nathan.
Patton, W., & McMahon, M. (2014). Career development and systems theory: Connecting theory and practice (2nd ed.). Springer.
Roberts, B. W., & DelVecchio, W. F. (2000). The rank-order consistency of personality traits from childhood to old age: a quantitative review of longitudinal studies. Psychological bulletin, 126(1), 3-25. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.1.3
Robianto, F., & Masdupi, E. (2020). The effect of career development, compensation, work environment and job satisfaction on work engagement. 4th Padang International Conference on Education, Economics, Business and Accounting (PICEEBA-2 2019), 737-748.
Rothmann, S., & Rothmann, J. S. (2010). Factors associated with employee engagement in South Africa. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 36(2), 1-12.
Rounds, J., Armstrong, P. I., Liao, H.-Y., Rivkin, D., & Lewis, P. (2008). Second generation occupational value profiles for the O* NET system: Summary. National Center for O* NET Development.
Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of managerial psychology, 21(7), 600-619. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940610690169
Saks, A. M., & Gruman, J. A. (2014). What do we really know about employee engagement? Human resource development quarterly, 25(2), 155-182. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21187
Santilli, S., Nota, L., & Hartung, P. J. (2019). Efficacy of a group career construction intervention with early adolescent youth. Journal of vocational behavior, 111, 49-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.06.007
Savickas, M. (2019). Career counseling (1st ed.). American Psychological Association Washington, DC.
Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. (2004). Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: A multi‐sample study. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 25(3), 293-315. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.248
Schaufeli, W. B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: A two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness studies, 3, 71-92.
Schneider, B., & Bowen, D. E. (2010). Winning the service game: Revisiting the rules by which people co-create value. Springer.
Scullion, H., & Collings, D. G. (2011). Global talent management: Introduction. Routledge.
Scullion, H., Collings, D. G., & Caligiuri, P. (2010). Global talent management. Elsevier.
Skaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2007). Dimensions of teacher self-efficacy and relations with strain factors, perceived collective teacher efficacy, and teacher burnout. Journal of educational psychology, 99(3), 611-625. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.99.3.611
Spector, P. E. (2021). Industrial and organizational psychology: Research and practice (1st ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Spector, P. E. (2022). Job satisfaction: from assessment to intervention. Routledge.
Stead, G. B., & Schultheiss, D. E. P. (2010). Validity of childhood career development scale scores in South Africa. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 10, 73-88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10775-010-9175-y
Toropova, A., Myrberg, E., & Johansson, S. (2021). Teacher job satisfaction: the importance of school working conditions and teacher characteristics. Educational review, 73(1), 71-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1705247
Vondracek, F. W., Lerner, R. M., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2019). Career development: A life-span developmental approach (1st ed.). Routledge.
Weiss, H. M. (2002). Deconstructing job satisfaction: Separating evaluations, beliefs, and affective experiences. Human resource management review, 12(2), 173-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1053-4822(02)00045-1
Wright, P. M., Gardner, T. M., Moynihan, L. M., & Allen, M. R. (2005). The relationship between HR practices and firm performance: Examining causal order. Personnel psychology, 58(2), 409-446. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00487.x
Xanthopoulou, D., Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2007). The role of personal resources in the job demands-resources model. International journal of stress management, 14(2), 121-141. https://doi.org/10.1037/1072-5245.14.2.121
Yang, C.-L., & Hwang, M. (2014). Personality traits and simultaneous reciprocal influences between job performance and job satisfaction. Chinese Management Studies, 8(1), 6-26. https://doi.org/10.1108/cms-09-2011-0079
Zhao, H., & Seibert, S. E. (2006). The big five personality dimensions and entrepreneurial status: a meta-analytical review. Journal of applied psychology, 91(2), 259-271. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.2.259
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Zhiping He
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The submitting author warrants that the submission is original and that she/he is the author of the submission together with the named co-authors; to the extend the submission incorporates text passages, figures, data, or other material from the work of others, the submitting author has obtained any necessary permission.
Articles in this journal are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY What does this mean?). This is to get more legal certainty about what readers can do with published articles, and thus a wider dissemination and archiving, which in turn makes publishing with this journal more valuable for you, the authors.
