Professional Capital: Principal Practice and Teacher Job Satisfaction

• In Event: 52.021 - Generating Teacher Job Satisfaction: Leadership Makes a Difference

Abstract

Utilizing Hargreaves and Fullan’s conceptual framework of Professional Capital, this paper draws from an explanatory sequential mixed methods correlational study that sought to understand the relationship between teachers’ perception of their principal’s practice of building professional capital and teachers’ self-reported job satisfaction. The quantitative and qualitative data indicated that all teachers interviewed possess varying degrees of professional capital and that their job satisfaction is attributed to factors that are independent of their relationship with their principal. The findings suggest that the professional capital that teachers acquire, regardless of source, is more important to teacher job satisfaction than principal practice and that principals are missing opportunities to capitalize on the existing professional capital of teachers to build instructional capacity.

Author

• Christine Annette Burke Adams, Self-employed