Career Motivation and Job Satisfaction in Türkiye: Mediating Role of Teacher İnnovativeness and İnstructional Practice

Abstract

Scholarly research on teachers’ job satisfaction has recently attracted the attention of researchers. However, only few studies have focused on the factors that address teachers’ job satisfaction, as to reveal whether and to what extent teachers’ career motivations, especially social utility motivation, affect job satisfaction. Existing literature suggests that social utility motivation is likely to affect the factors such as teachers’ commitment, teaching practices, self-efficacy, and professionalism, which can be considered necessary for job satisfaction. In this context, this study aims to reveal the effect of teachers’ social utility motivation on job satisfaction and the mediating effect performed by instructional practice and teacher innovation, using data from the TALIS 2018 dataset. Based on our research questions, we used data teacher questionnaires gathered in Türkiye. After accounting for missing values, the structural equation modeling analysis 2539 teachers from Türkiye. In the study, the researchers applied a mediation analysis of structural equation modeling to test the proposed model. The results of the analysis confirm that instructional practice and teacher innovation mediate between social utility motivation and job satisfaction. This research is expected to contribute to the studies that focus on the effects of social utility motivation on job satisfaction.