Research aim and questions

The overarching aim guiding this study is to explore the relationship between early-career teachers’ affective-motivational characteristics and their occupational well-being. In order to achieve this aim, the following research questions are identified:

1. What is the nature of direct and indirect contributions (via teachers’ self-efficacy and goal orientations) of early-career teachers’ personality (both self- and other-reported), motivation for teaching and social and emotional competences in prediction of their occupational well-being?
2. What is the relationship between early-career teachers’ occupational well-being and students’ perceptions of motivational elements of instructional quality?
3. How do early-career teachers perceive their occupational well-being? Which individual characteristics and circumstances teachers perceive to contribute to their occupational well-being and in what way?

Methodology

A mixed methods design combining quantitative and qualitative methods is used in research with early career teachers. In addition, the research design envisages quantitative data collection from student sample, thus enabling the consideration of teacher well-being from both teacher and student perspectives.

In quantitative research, three samples of participants will be included:

1. Early-career teachers - sample A: Targeted sample will consist of approximately 700 early-career subject teachers (up to five years of experience) who are teaching in higher grades of elementary schools (5th to 8th grade) in Croatia. The invitation for early career teachers to fill out the questionnaire will be distributed by e-mail to all elementary schools (with the exception of 30 schools that will be included in the procedure of forming the sample B).
2. Early-career teachers’ sample B: Sample B will include approximately 120 early-career teachers from 30 randomly sampled elementary schools in the City of Zagreb and Zagreb County. Early-career subject teachers who teach 7th grade compulsory subjects with weekly instruction time of two or more hours will be included in this sample. The same questionnaire used with teachers in the sample A will be administered to teachers in the sample B. In addition, teachers in the sample B will also be rated by their students and 60 of them (two per school) will participate in the qualitative phase of study.
3. Student sample: This sample will include approximately 1800 7th grade students taught by the teachers comprising the sample B. Students will assess motivational elements of teachers’ instructional quality (dashed lines in Figure 1) and teacher personality. This will enable the integration of data from two sources - teachers and students, as proposed by the second research question, providing complementary and more detailed insight into early-career teachers’ occupational well-being.

Qualitative research phase will follow quantitative research phase in order to gain a more comprehensive view on teachers’ occupational well-being during early career in teaching, as framed within our third research question. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with 60 teachers from the sample B. The interview protocol will consist of questions regarding teachers’ perception of their occupational well-being and individual characteristics and circumstances that either reinforce or hinder their sense of occupational well-being. The interviews with teachers will be organized and conducted in their respective schools.

Conceptual framework

The aim of this study is to offer an extensive mapping of affective-motivational teacher characteristics, and to explore the role of these characteristics in early-career teachers’ occupational well-being. Teachers’ occupational well-being is understood in this research as positive outcomes of early-career teachers such as enthusiasm for teaching, job satisfaction, work engagement, planned persistence in the profession, and low burnout (Figure 1, right).
A broadened conceptualization of teaching competences elaborated in several large-scale assessments of teaching quality has spurred interest into the affective-motivational aspects of the teaching profession (Guerriero, 2017). Encouraged by research on the role of these aspects in positive teacher outcomes, we will examine the following elements of affective-motivational characteristics in our research: personality, various aspects of teacher motivation and their socio-emotional competences (Figure 1, left).