Given that teacher shortage is an international problem, teacher job satisfaction merits closer attention. Not only is job satisfaction closely related to teacher retention, but it also contributes to the well-being of teachers and their students, overall school cohesion and enhanced status of the teaching profession. This study investigates the relations between teacher job satisfaction, school working conditions and teacher characteristics for eighth grade mathematics teachers. The study employs TIMSS 2015 (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) data from Sweden. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling are used as main methods. Results demonstrate a substantial association between school working conditions and teacher job satisfaction. More specifically, teacher workload, teacher cooperation and teacher perceptions of student discipline in school were the factors most closely related to teacher job satisfaction. As to teacher characteristics, female teachers, teachers with more exposure to professional development and more efficacious teachers tended to have higher levels of job satisfaction. In addition, it was found that the relationship between the extent of teacher cooperation and job satisfaction was more pronounced for male teachers, while student discipline was more important for job satisfaction of teachers with lower self-efficacy beliefs. Implications for policy are further discussed.

This study explores how aspects of teacher quality are related to student achievement and students' perceptions of instructional quality on the basis of eighth grade TIMSS 2011 data for Sweden. Indicators of teacher quality are coursework in mathematics as measured by the number of semesters of studying mathematics, years of teaching experience and teacher self-efficacy beliefs. The study employs confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling as primary methods. Results indicate that teachers with higher self-efficacy beliefs were rated by students as delivering higher instructional quality. However, this was not reflected in student achievement levels. Instead, with student socioeconomic and immigrant background under control, there was a significant positive relationship between coursework in mathematics and student mathematic achievement levels, as well as between student perceptions of instructional quality and achievement. Relations between teaching experience and student achievement followed a non-linear pattern, with the effect of teaching experience increasing up to 19 years and declining afterwards.

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Background. Students with low socio-economic status (SES) are typically depicted as low performers and more likely to fail in school. However, a group of students, despite their background, manage to succeed in school. The capacity to overcome adversities and achieve successful educational outcomes is referred to as Academic Resilience. Research on the relationship between personality traits and academic performance shows that conscientiousness is a crucial factor in predicting academic success and resilience. However, it has also been shown that achievement is a result of an interaction between conscientiousness and students' interest in the subject.Aims. The study aims to investigate how students' school-related perseverance and interest predict academic achievement among resilient and non-resilient pupils over time in the Swedish compulsory school setting.Sample. Study subjects were a subset (N = 1,665) of the sampled compulsory school students from the 1992 birth cohort in the evaluation through follow-up (ETF) database.Methods. Multigroup structural equation modelling (SEM) with latent variable interaction was used. Measurement invariance was tested to examine the comparability of the constructs across groups.Results. The results suggest that resilient students rely heavily on both perseverance of effort and interest in school subjects to succeed in their education. For the non-resilient group, the later perseverance level was conditioned on the level of the interest, and neither their early nor later grade interest was related to their achievement.Conclusions. The academically resilient students displayed more consistency in interest and perseverance over time, which might explain their relative success compared to the non-resilient group.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.