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8The relationship between Afghan EFL teachers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment with their continuing professional development
Farida Faqiri Qodsya Mastour Herat University, Afghanistan
Abstract: Job satisfaction and organizational commitment closely relate to teacher development. In the same way, professional development includes the activities that a teacher contracts either singly or cooperatively toward development after beginning professional practice. These variables all move teachers toward development in the teaching career. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between Afghan EFL teachers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment to their continuing professional development. To this end, 110 EFL teachers selected from different public schools and private English language institutes in Herat. The participants completed three questionnaires of Job satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Continuing Professional Development. The research employed a correlational design. The study helps the policy makers to make faculty committed to the organization to enhance their teaching effectiveness, improve professional practices, and in turn reduce turnover.
Keywords: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, continuing professional development, EFL, teacher
INTRODUCTION
Teachers face many challenges in contributing to the implementation of educational reform. For the implementation process to be successful, it is essential to consider what changes teachers 'experience bring during the teaching and learning process before introducing educational innovations. As Fullan (2016) disagreed 'educational change depends on the behavior and mindset of teachers'. So, the role of teachers and their continuing professional development (CPD) is gaining attention to take into account in the implementation of educational reform. According to Bell and Gilbert (2005), teacher development is a continuing process, and teachers are constantly looking for new methods to improve student learning. During the CPD process, teachers acquire new understandings and beliefs about the possibilities of new teaching methods and materials for student learning and seek to grow holistically, not only professionally. They were weak to develop socially and personally as well.
Professional development of teachers is now seen essential to meet the "ever-changing needs of students in today's schools". It is therefore becoming increasingly important by nearly every country's government worldwide. Goodson and Hargreaves (2002) describe the teaching profession as the essential profession that plays a vital role in the knowledge of society, and refers to the teacher as the society of midwife, without whom the future of society would be misleading. Moreover, Day and Sachs (2004) argue that the effects of globalization are shaping education policy in general and teacher training in particular. In her opinion, given recent educational reforms, curriculum changes are no longer any option, but an expectation of the teaching profession. To understand how educational change affect teachers' professional development and the teacher's role, it must first be considered why and by whom educational changes were initiated. Examining the change in education in the current literature makes it easy to perceive that the initiation has been for various reasons, for example, according to Fullan (2016). They may even voluntarily participate in or initiate change". Alternatively, it may initiate to the teacher himself. For example, teachers may wish to accommodate professional criticisms and problems (Bell & Gilbert (2005). In fact, teachers may be both the source of the changes and affected by change (Sikes, 2013).
Teachers have a crucial role in implementing innovation, but they also need to change their beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, skills, and most importantly, teaching practices. At this point, many authors recognize the importance of teacher professional development in implementing educational reforms. For example, Fullan and Hargreaves (2016) argued that the implementation process is essentially for learning process. Thus, teacher development and implementation go hand in hand if tied to a particular innovation". Essentially, they argue that teachers and the implementation of educational innovation must happen simultaneously, regardless of the direction of change. The implementation process requires teachers to put new ideas and insights into practice. The implementation process viewed as a learning process, and educational changes viewed as teacher development.
However, other variables might affect continuing professional development including job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Bell and Gilbert (2005) suggested three aspects of teacher development: personal, social, and professional. They argued that for successful social development, teachers need to view isolation in the classroom as a problem, evaluate how they work together, and ultimately initiate cooperation with their peers. Furthermore, Adey (2004) emphasizes in his professional development model the nature of the environment in which innovation is initiated. He suggested two main aspects that either support or hinder teachers' attempts to change. "One is the presence or absence of peer support and the opportunity to share experiences informally." Accordingly, it can be inferred that job satisfaction and
organizational commitment refer to these three aspects of teacher development. Teachers entering the teaching profession must be dedicated and competent. This shows that teachers can reach their full potential when there are aspects of their job that determine job satisfaction (Anne & Granholdt, 2001).
Teacher job satisfaction is one of the most essential issues for education systems worldwide and has been the topic of much research (Li & Yu, 2022; Newton, et al., 2022; Oubibi, et al., 2022).
Teachers are the most critical factors for improving quality in any education system (Afe, 2001; Stuart, 2002). According to Ololube (2006), job satisfaction and motivation are essential for development of education systems worldwide, standing alongside professional knowledge and skills, with a focus on competencies and educational resources. This is further supported by Schmidt (Al-Alawiyat, 2010), stating that training and development satisfaction are essential factors in career development, and that training increasing job satisfaction and employee retention. Filak and Sheldon (2008) also point out that employees' competence comes from feeling effective in taking on and learning challenging tasks. Ololube (2006) repeatedly stated that job satisfaction is essential for growth and productivity, which benefits the education system. As discussed above, it seems that teachers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment can have relationships with their continuing professional development.
These three variables are the focal aspects of this article. The researcher's primary purposes are to find whether organizational commitment and job satisfaction can determine and relate to continuing professional development among EFL Afghan teachers or not. Based on the previous studies, the role of continuing professional development ignored in Afghanistan and there is dearth of research to investigate the relationships among these three variables which is the gap of the present study and the researcher intends to fill this gap through the current research study.
Material and Methods: This study carried out in several public schools and private language institutes in Herat. The schools and institutes were selected based on availability. The questionnaires were copied and distributed as paper-based among the available school and institute teachers. They also distributed through the online links. The online links of these three questionnaires sent through social medias to the participants. The participants could edit their responses immediately using their mobile phones by touching the correct response online. They assured that their demographic information would be confidential to the researcher. To receive reliable data, the researcher explained the purpose of completing the questionnaires. After collecting the questionaries' data, they analyzed, and the research questions answered.
Participants of the study: The target population for the current study included teachers at schools and English language institutes in Herat. 110 instructors
participated in the study by convenience sampling from various schools and English language institutes. Participants' age ranged from 20 to 49 (M = 28.21, SD = 5.97) with 1 to 22 years of English teaching experience (M = 7.48, SD = 5.35), their education levels ranged from B.A. to M.A. in the fields of English Literature, English Translation, and English Teaching.
Measures: The data in this study collected in two different aspects. In the first aspect, two sets of questionnaires used to analyze the leaders' level of efficacy and the faculty's level of self-efficacy. The first set was the Leadership Efficacy Questionnaire (LEQ), and the second was the Faculty Efficacy Questionnaire (FEQ). In the second aspect, semi- structured interviews displayed with a small subsample of the faculty to prepare further insight (Creswell, Plano Clark, Gutmann, & Hanson, 2003) into leadership efficacy at the college level and the faculty efficacy in Teaching and Research. The interview questions evolved based on the LEQ and FEQ items and their authority accepted with a panel of two professors in Education. The primary purpose of conducting interviews with the faculty was to provide further insight into leadership, teaching, and research efficacy and to support the main findings in the quantitative aspect.
The LEQ is a 22-item construct that includes three subscales. Every subscale of the LEQ could be utilized as a separate construct, or all three can combine in two or three (Hannah et al., 2012). The current study applied two subscales: (1) Leader Action Efficacy (LAE), including seven items, measures the leaders' perceived ability to efficiently perform different critical leader actions, such as motivating, coaching, and inspiring subordinates and getting the subordinates to come along with the organization and its goals and vision. (2) Leader Self-Regulation Efficacy (LSRE), which comprises eight items, measures the leaders' ability to think through complicated leadership circumstances, interprets their subordinates and the context, and creates novel and natural solutions to leadership challenges linked to the ability to motivate themselves to enact the solutions using effective leadership with subordinates. The LEQ entails a 10-point Likert scale with ten increments from 0 (not confident) to 100 (totally confident). A score of 50 or 50% represents moderate confidence (Pereira, 2018). An important question about this instrument in the literature is whether it associated with different cultural dimensions. This instrument has been developed based on the Transformational Leadership (Avolio, Sosik, & Yair, 2012), which assesses 'trustworthiness, justice, honesty, encouragement, positivity, motivational, confidence, dynamicity, and having foresight'. These leadership features are more or less universally shared and effective (Hartog, Muijen, & Koopman, 1997) and mainly linked with collectivistic culture (Leong, 2011). Hence, it is a logical support for applying this inventory across different organizational and cultural contexts (Rowold & Heinitz, 2007).
Data analysis
The current study employed a correlational design to find the relationships among the study variables. The study used only quantitative data, the study is cross-sectional and quantitative. First, descriptive statistics used to summarize the related gathered data regarding standard deviation and mean. To determine the relationship between EFL teachers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment; the relationship of organizational commitment and continuing professional development; and the relationship of job satisfaction and continuing professional development, Spearman rank order correlation test was run. To find out how much the variation in the EFL teachers' organizational commitment and job satisfaction attributed to continuing professional development, first, the data obtained for job satisfaction and organizational commitment converted into semi- interval data and then regression analysis used. Moreover, Pearson correlation coefficient used.
RQ1. Is there any statistically significant relationship between Afghan EFL teachers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment?
The first question related to the degree of instructors' organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Spearman rank order was performed to look at the conceivable connection between the variables. The outcomes are introduced in Table 1.
Relationship between language teachers' organizational commitment and job
satisfaction
Spearman's rho Total job satisfaction
Affective Commitment Correlation Coefficient -.205*
Scale Sig. (2-tailed) .032
N 110
Continuance Correlation Coefficient .616**
Commitment Scale Sig. (2-tailed) .000
N 110
Normative Commitment Correlation Coefficient -.203*
Scale Sig. (2-tailed) .033
N 110
Total organizational Correlation Coefficient .089
Commitment Sig. (2-tailed) .355
N 110
Table 1. It was viewed that there was a little significant relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction, the relationship between the element continuation responsibility and job satisfaction was measurably critical (rho= 6162) at 0.05 level, job satisfaction Affective Commitment Scale Correlation Coefficient was -.205* Sig. (2-tailed) .032 N 110. Continuance Commitment, Scale Correlation Coefficient, was .616** Sig. (2-tailed) .000 N 110. Normative Commitment Scale Correlation Coefficient was -.203* Sig. (2-tailed) .033 N 110 Total organizational commitment Correlation Coefficient .089 Sig. (2-tailed) .355 N 110, which was high. However, the relationships between emotional commitment with job satisfaction
(rho=-.205) and standardizing commitment with job satisfaction (rho=-.203) was less and critical. The outcomes in Table 1. showed that, there was measurably less critical connection between educator's job satisfaction and their organizational commitment (rho=.089, p>.05).
RQ2. Is there any statistically significant relationship between Afghan EFL teachers' job satisfaction and their continuing professional development?
The second research question concerned with whether there was any statistically significant relationship between teachers' job satisfaction and their CPD. Spearman rank order correlation test was administered to the mean ranks of the job satisfaction questionnaire that assessed teachers' attitudes about jobs and their different aspects and their CPD values. The central assumption of using Spearman Rank Order Correlation test was that the data obtained from the Likert- scale job satisfaction questionnaire was ordinal and the association between series of rank order data and interval data was going to be computed. Table 2 presents the correlation coefficient.
Correlation between teachers' job satisfaction and CPD
Satisfaction
Spearman's Total CPD Correlation Coefficient .159
Rho Sig. (2-tailed) .098
N 110
Your Beliefs about CPD Correlation Coefficient .146
Sig. (2-tailed) .128
N 110
Benefits of CPD Correlation Coefficient .081
Sig. (2-tailed) .400
N 110
In Correlation Coefficient 219*
Decision making Sig. (2-tailed) .021
about CPD N 110
For the teachers' overall CPD and job satisfaction, Spearman rho value (rho=. 159) was positive, indicating a positive correlation between the total teacher CPD and job satisfaction values, the correlation was less significant (sig=.098, p> .05). For the teachers' CPD and job satisfaction, Spearman rho value (rho=.146) was also positive but the correlation was less significant (sig= .128, p> .05). For the teachers' CPD and job satisfaction, Spearman rho value (rho=.081) was deficient. The correlation was statistically less significant (sig= .400, p> .05). Nevertheless, for the teachers' Decision making about CPD and job satisfaction, Spearman rho value (rho=.219) showed a positive correlation that was statistically significant (sig=.021, p<.05). The results of the Spearman Rank Order were job satisfaction Spearman's rho Total CPD Correlation Coefficient .159 Sig. (2-tailed) .098 N 110 Your Beliefs about CPD Correlation Coefficient .146 Sig. (2-tailed) .128 N 110 Benefits of CPD Correlation Coefficient .081 Sig. (2-tailed) .400 N 110, in Decision making about CPD Correlation Coefficient .219* Sig. (2-tailed) .021 N 110, interpreted based on Cohen's classification. Cohen
(1988, pp. 79-81) suggested the following guidelines for interpreting the results of the correlation coefficient:
Cohen's guidelines for interpreting the results of the correlation coefficient
Interpretation Correlation value
Small .10 to .29
Medium .30 to .49
Large .50 to 1.0
Table 3.There was a slight correlation between overall CPD and job satisfaction (rho= .159 < .30), suggesting a small relationship between the teachers' CPD and job satisfaction. The strength of the association between teachers' job satisfaction, and CPD in Decision making was higher than the association between other subscales of the CPD and job satisfaction.
RQ3. Is there any statistically significant relationship between Afghan EFL teachers' organizational commitment and their continuing professional development?
The third research question was aimed at finding whether there was any statistically significant association between organizational commitment and continuing professional development. Spearman rank order was performed for the relationship between the three sections. Interpretation Correlation Value Small .10 to .29 Medium .30 to .49 Large .50 to 1.0 of the organizational commitment (ordinal data) and the three subscales of teacher CPD. The results are presented in Table 3.
Relationship between language teachers' organizational commitment and CPD
Spearman's rho Beliefs about CPD Benefits of CPD Decision- making about CPD Total CPD
Affective Correlation .387** .434** .317** 411**
Commitment Coefficient
Scale Sig. (2- tailed) .000 .000 .001 .000
N 110 110 110 110
Continuance Correlation .120 .009 .195* .128
Commitment Coefficient
Scale Sig. (2- tailed) .212 .925 .041 .182
N 110 110 110 110
Normative Correlation 164 .084 .069 .102
Commitment Coefficient
Scale Sig. (2- tailed) .087 .382 .472 .288
N 110 110 110 110
Total organizational Correlation Coefficient .265** .210* .220* .244*
Commitment Sig. (2- tailed) .005 .027 .021 .010
N 110 110 110 110
DISCUSSION
The correlations between continuance commitment and CPD in classroom management were statistically significant (Rho=.195, sig= .041, p <.05). In a similar vein, the correlations among the overall organizational commitment and the three subscales of CPD were all statistically significant. Nevertheless, the associations
between other subscales were not statistically significant (p> .05). In other words, the teachers who had higher organizational commitment scores reported higher CPD than their counterparts.
The results showed that there was not a statistically significant relationship between teachers' overall job satisfaction and their overall organizational commitment. This means that if teachers' job satisfaction increases, it does not necessarily mean that their organizational commitment increases. The teachers' organizational commitment is not a significant determinant of teachers' job satisfaction, but the association between the continuance commitment, affective commitment, and normative commitment with job satisfaction was significant. The findings of this research are in contrast with the findings of a study conducted by Getahun et al., (2016) who found that teachers had slightly below average level of job satisfaction and the teachers' level of organizational commitment in the samples school was found to be high. So, the results showed a statistically significant positive relationship between teachers' job satisfaction and overall organizational commitment. Also, it is reported that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between teachers' job satisfaction and the three subscales of organizational commitment (Getahun et al., 2016).
As Getahun et al., (2016) argued teachers are probably the most critical professionals in the development of the nation; their satisfaction at work is of the utmost importance for the nation's education development. Research into job satisfaction for teachers is therefore vital in order to retain teachers in the education profession and to promote increased productivity for teachers. In keeping with job satisfaction, "organizational commitment " has recently become an exciting field of study in management. Job satisfaction affects the health of staff, their efficiency, the organization's working relationships and the overall efficiency of the organization, job satisfaction has individual, organizational and social results concerning these aspects (Getahun et al., 2016). Some researchers argued that job satisfaction reflects immediate emotive reactions to the task whereas commitment to the organization develops slowly once the individual forms a comprehensive estimate of the organization, its values, and expectations, and one's future in it (Malik et al., 2010).
To answer to the second research question Spearman rank order correlation test was run to the mean ranks of the job satisfaction questionnaire that assessed teachers' attitudes about their job and their CPD values. The results of the analysis implied that the correlation between teachers' decision making about CPD and their job satisfaction was statistically significant, however there was not a statistically significant relationship between teachers' overall CPD and their job satisfaction. This finding of the research is similar with the results of the study conducted by Rastegar and Moradi (2016) who concluded that there is not any significant relationship between job satisfaction and teachers' CPD. Salehi et al., (2015) claimed that satisfied teachers
assumed that most of their learners consider English important especially at higher level, because they have plain goal to learn. Such beliefs help the teachers to do their best to teach material in the best way and use the methods that make learning as enjoyable as possible regardless of the organization and its goals or their relationship and commitment toward the organization.
The third research question was analyzed by Spearman rank order to investigate the relationship between the three sections of organizational commitment and CPD. The result for the overall CPD and overall organizational commitment indicated a positive and small correlation and statistically significant relationship between them. The results of the third question showed that the degree of teachers' commitment is one of the essential important aspects of increasing performance and quality of school staff (Miskel & Oyawa 1988; Reyes 1990; Rowan 1990). An understanding of teachers' level of commitment is crucial because it reflects their interpretation of to be absorbed and feel that work experiences are meaningful (Dannetta, 2002). Allinder (1994) claimed that teachers who have a strong sense of CPD tend to employ more significant levels of organization, planning, and enthusiasm. CONCLUSION
The current study aimed to investigate the possible relationship between EFL teachers' job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and their continuing professional development. To achieve the goals of the study and to gain better understanding of the nature of such a relationship the researcher formed three research questions.
The findings of the study indicated that there was a slight correlation between overall CPD and job satisfaction. The strength of the association between teachers' job satisfaction and decision making in CPD was higher than the association between job satisfaction and belief about CPD and job satisfaction; therefore, the results of the statistical analysis confirmed the implying that the correlation between teachers' CPD and their job satisfaction is significant. Also, there was a positive and small correlation and significant relationship between the overall teacher CPD and total organizational commitment. In other words, the teachers with higher CPD scores had higher organizational commitment than their counterparts. By the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction, it was found that although there was no statistically significant correlation between organizational commitment and job satisfaction, the association between the factor continuance commitment, affective commitment, and normative commitment with job satisfaction was statistically significant.
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