Job Satisfaction, Leadership Styles, and Teaching Practices among CNMI Public Elementary School Teachers

Abstract

This study investigated whether teacher leadership styles and teaching practices influenced teacher job satisfaction among public elementary school teachers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The study answered the following questions: (1) what is the level of job satisfaction among public elementary school teachers in the CNMI; (2) to what extent do CNMI teachers fall into the personal leadership style categories of transactional or transformational; (3) to what extent do CNMI public school teachers prefer either didactic or constructivist teaching practices; (4) to what extent do demographic factors, preferred leadership styles, and preferred teaching practices affect the degree of job satisfaction expressed by the CNMI public elementary school teachers; and (5)to what extent does the interaction between leadership style and teaching practice affect the degree of job satisfaction expressed by the CNMI public elementary school teachers. This study used survey research and multiple regression to answer the questions. Teachers were moderately satisfied with their jobs. They preferred transformational leadership styles to transactional ones and didactic teaching practices to constructivist ones. The dependent variable job satisfaction, when regressed against the eight independent variables age, gender, years teaching, highest degree held, English as a mother tongue, leadership styles, teaching practices, and an interaction variable between leadership styles and teaching practices called agreement, was found to be significantly influenced by only gender and agreement. For gender, females were more satisfied than men, and for agreement, teachers whose leadership styles and teaching practices were in dissonance were more satisfied than those whose styles and practices were in harmony.