Teacher Appraisals of Resources, Demands, Job Satisfaction, and Instructional Support Across Four Years

• In Event: Focus on Teacher Stress

Abstract

Many factors contribute to teacher stress including inadequate compensation, curricular mandates, managing children and families, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We used school climate data from a Texas school district from 2020-2024 to examine whether teacher ratings of classroom demands and resources were associated with job satisfaction and perceived levels of instructional support. Multi-level models with school characteristics (n=47) at Level 2 and teacher characteristics (n=1,500-2,000/wave) at Level 1 demonstrated teachers’ appraisals of demands and resources were associated with both outcomes. These findings were consistent across schools and waves of data collection despite varying contextual factors (pre-COVID, during COVID, COVID recovery, and post-COVID). Most of the variance in both outcomes was found between teachers within the same school.

Authors

• Richard G. Lambert, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Christopher J. McCarthy, University of Texas at Austin

• Teresa Tian, University of Texas at Austin

• Trisha Miller, University of Texas at Austin

• Alessandra Caldwell, University of North Carolina - Charlotte