Teachers' Psychological Functioning in the Workplace: Exploring the Roles of Contextual Beliefs, Need Satisfaction, and Personal Characteristics

The purpose of the current study was to provide a greater depth of knowledge about teachers' psychological functioning at work-including the contextual, basic psychological need satisfaction and personal factors relevant to this. We examined the extent to which perceived autonomy support predicts basic psychological need satisfaction and, in turn, whether need satisfaction predicts teachers' perceptions of well-being, motivation, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Participants were 485 Canadian school teachers (76% female) who completed an online questionnaire. After confirming the measurement model with factor analysis, the hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling. Findings indicated that perceived autonomy support positively predicted need satisfaction, and, in turn, need satisfaction predicted the work-related perceptions. Of particular importance were the differing roles played by the basic psychological needs in predicting each of the work-related perceptions. Additional analyses revealed that well-being and motivation played key mediating roles in how need satisfaction was associated with job satisfaction (but less so with commitment) and that teachers' personal characteristics played minor moderating roles in influencing how teachers' workplace beliefs and perceptions were associated. Together, the study's findings enable a greater depth of understanding about teachers' psychological functioning at work, which is important for healthy teachers and effective teaching and learning.