Does Empowerment Effects the Quality of Work Life?

Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and rapid developments in technology increase the need for improving the teaching-learning process and teacher performance. Research shows that empowerment has a significant and positive effect on teachers’ organizational behavior.Schools are living spaces where teachers spend most of their lives. As long as teachers’ perceptions of the quality of work life are high, it is expected that the degree of achieving the goals of the school will be greater. In this article, it is evaluated how empowerment in their school affects their own work life quality according to teachers’ perceptions. Quantitative design was used in this study. The data of this research were collected from 298 teachers determined by random sampling method working in the central districts of Denizli province during the 2020-2021 academic year.235 (79%) of the teachers participating in the study were female and 63 (21%) were male. The Teacher Empowerment Scale developed by Hıdıroğlu and Tanrıöğen (2020) was used to measure teachers’ perceptions of empowerment. The Quality of Work Life Scale, which was adapted to Turkish and educational organizations by Akar and Üstüner (2017), was used in order to determine teachers’ perceptions towards their work life quality. Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to predict the quality of work life by using the “cooperation”, “professional development”, “trust” and “status” sub-dimensions of teacher empowerment. Teacher empowerment affects the quality of work life. Accordingly, “cooperation”, “professional development”, “trust” and “status” which are the dimensions of teacher empowerment predict the quality of work life positively and significantly. The predictive variables “collaboration”, “professional development”, “trust” and “status” dimensions explain 58% of the total variance of the predicted variable “quality of work life”. However, according to the standardized regression coefficients (β), the order of importance of the predictor variables on “quality of work life” is “trust”, “status”, “collaboration” and “professional development”. In this study, it is recommended to examine the “trust” and “status” dimensions, which were determined as the variables with the highest impact on “quality of work life”, separately.