[MUSIC] Welcome to week six of course seven, being a professional. In week six we've looked at continuing to develop as a professional. In this final lecture, we'll look at the importance of keeping a balanced life, and we'll look at the issues of teacher stress and satisfaction. Earlier, I provided for you some findings from some international research I conducted with colleagues in the area of teacher satisfaction and dissatisfaction. We've provided for you, a chapter of my book, How to get your School Moving and Improving. That chapter is on teacher and school executive satisfaction, motivation, and stress. We'll look at some of the key implications from this work for you, in terms of your balanced life and work as a professional. Table 5.1, for example, provides some of the reasons that teachers gave us for wanting to become a teacher in Australia, England, and New Zealand. There's also some comments about how well people were prepared, or thought they were prepared for teaching, when they began their career. You might like to reflect upon these and consider your own motivations for becoming a teacher. [MUSIC] We also use something called, Novacek and Lazarus' Commitment Scales to measure the values and what people were committed to, in terms of becoming a teacher. You might also think about these values, such as affiliation or working with others, power and achievement, and so forth, in terms of your own reasons for wanting to be a teacher, and what underpins those? What are the key values, for example, that you seek through being a teacher? [MUSIC] What is most satisfying and dissatisfying in teaching was also examined. Reflect again, on your own feelings about the things that you find most satisfying and dissatisfying in teaching. This will have important implications for your work/life balance and for improving your satisfaction as a teacher. [MUSIC] Just to review, we found from our study that teachers tended to rate the intrinsic aspects of teaching, such as student achievement, getting through to others, pastoral care, and working with colleagues as highly satisfying. Teachers and school executives also reported that the external aspects of teaching, that is, things outside the school, such as the status of teachers, imposed change, with the depiction of teachers in the media, these things were highly dissatisfying across all samples. But, it was the middle ring, if you like, of school-based factors, where most variation occurred with teacher satisfaction, and as we've noted, leadership was a key influence on teachers' satisfaction, with their school based factors. We also asked teachers whether they were satisfied overall, but also whether they're satisfaction with teaching had changed over time. I'd like you to consider these questions for yourself. How satisfied are you with teaching at the present time? And are you now more satisfied, or less satisfied, than when you began teaching? We also mentioned that position can influence satisfaction. Those, for example, in leadership positions such as principals, tended to be the most satisfied. Those in middle management or leadership positions in schools, tended to be the least satisfied. Thinking about the position you hold in your school, how is your satisfaction possibly related to the responsibilities and expectations that are held for that position? In pages 93 to 94 of the chapter that I provided for you, is a list of strategies designed to enhance teacher satisfaction, derived from research over a number of decades. I'd like you to look at these series of suggestions and to think about the degree to which they may apply to you. For each of them, think about the possibilities in your school setting and context. More importantly though, it's important for you right now to think about your work/life balance. To what degree, is your career as a teacher, as a professional, a job or is it more than that? Is it all consuming? Do you have sufficient leisure time? Do you have time to get away from teaching and to think about other things? Work life balance is an important concept. And it's a different balance for every individual. But you need to think to yourself about your work-life balance. In the chapter, we talk about mental stress, and the degree to which people in various levels of education and various roles experience this. Can you reflect upon your levels of stress? And how you might address these. [MUSIC] That brings an end to this course, in course eight you'll look at developing relationships. Just to review what we've covered though, which is most important, in this course on being a professional. We looked at what it means to be a professional. We looked at ethics, codes of conduct, and standards for teachers. We looked at the legal and administrative responsibilities of a teacher. We talked about the importance of developing, a personal philosophy of teaching. We looked at the issue of becoming part of a professional learning community. And we also underlined of importance of you seeking and receiving advice on improving your teaching. Finally, we considered the issue of planning for your future development as a teacher. I hope that you've enjoyed the content, I hope that you've enjoyed the interaction, and I hope that you found the various resources valuable in your continuing development as a teacher. And I wish you well for that. [MUSIC]
