Date of Award

Summer 2019

Document Type

Master's Project

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

STEM Education & Professional Studies

Program/Concentration

Occupational and Technical Studies

Committee Director

Tian Luo

Abstract

Retaining high quality teachers to counteract the teacher shortage happening across the nation has been a focus of the education system. Middle school educators require a certain skill set and knowledge to be effective at this vital time in their student’s lives. These specific set of educators have not been exempt from the shortage statistic. A teachers’ overall job satisfaction plays a major role in their decision making on a daily basis and their longevity in the profession. Although there are studies on teachers’ job satisfaction, there is minimal research available on how the content area a middle school teacher teaches affects their job satisfaction.

This study explores the relationship between the variable of content area in relation to middle school teachers’ job satisfaction. All core content teachers at Currituck County Middle and Moyock Middle School were sent a demographic, aJIG, and aJDI questionnaire to measure job satisfaction. There were 25 participants in the study: eight from English language, nine from math, four from science, and four from social studies. Using the responses and scoring from the aJIG and JDI, a one-way ANOVA was conducted, along with descriptive statistics. The results and conclusions of the ANOVA suggest that there is no relationship between the core content area a teacher teaches and their job satisfaction. The descriptive statistics showed differences in the means of responses between variables and content areas, with English language arts teachers (M = 77.25) scoring the highest mean score and science teachers (M = 61.75) scoring the lowest mean score, out of a total of 114 points.

Comments

A Research Paper Submitted to the Faculty of Old Dominion University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the for the Degree of MASTERS OF SCIENCE [Occupational and Technical Studies]

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