School teachers’ causality orientation of motivation, emotional intelligence, and job satisfaction: An examination of mediating and moderating effects

Abstract

Teachers are invaluable as they perform a professional role essential to the academic and life success of students. However, there are multiple stress-inducing challenges inherent to the profession of teaching that may contribute to lower job satisfaction and teacher attrition. In this research, I focused on job satisfaction as an indicator of teacher well-being with the aim that teachers experience greater professional fulfillment as they are adequately supported within the educational system. The purpose of this research was to investigate possible mediating and moderating effects amid Trait Emotional Intelligence and Self-determination’s General Causality Orientation of Motivation (GCO) subscales of autonomy orientation, control orientation, and impersonal orientations of motivation for resultant levels of reported job satisfaction in Oklahoma school teachers. However, three COVID-19 related questions were asked due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic. Analyses were run to test trait emotional intelligence as a mediator of the relationship between GCO subscales and job satisfaction, and to test autonomy orientation as a moderator of the relationships of control orientation and trait emotional intelligence, and control orientation and teacher job satisfaction. While autonomy orientation was not found to be a statistically significant moderator of the relationships of control orientation, trait emotional intelligence was notably found to mediate certain GCO subscales. Specifically, trait emotional intelligence fully mediates the relationship between autonomy orientation and teacher job satisfaction, and trait emotional intelligence partially mediates the relationship between impersonal orientation and teacher job satisfaction.