Exploring the network effects on teachers’ efficacy and job satisfaction

Abstract

Teachers in Hong Kong need to learn from other teachers and other professionals to have better teachers’ job satisfaction and self-efficacy in their teaching profession. However, it is still questionable that whether all teachers find such information flow useful to their teaching profession, especially when they have more years of experience. The main idea of this research is to find out the usefulness of such information flow quantified in teachers’ social network, contributing to their teaching profession in particular about job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and job stress. Social network analysis together with interview were employed in the study to collect both quantitative data and qualitative data. 96 fulltime primary or secondary school teachers are invited to complete the questionnaire with seven of them are selected to have interviews. Results reveal that (a) self-efficacy, job satisfaction and teacher burnout of individual teachers are correlated to certain properties of intra-school social networks in their schools, (b) while school administrators preserves social networks in the school to maximize their teamwork among teachers, frontline teachers tend to passively maintain the network to fulfill their teaching duties. As suggestion, teachers are advised to care their colleagues further to prevent teacher burnout. The school administrators are recommended to ensure the communication among the teaching staff is adequate.