Collective pedagogical teacher culture, teacher-student ethno-racial mismatch, and teacher job satisfaction.

Social Science Research 45 (2014) 56–72

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Social Science Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssresearch

Collective pedagogical teacher culture, teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch, and teacher job satisfaction Elizabeth Stearns a,⇑, Neena Banerjee b, Roslyn Mickelson a, Stephanie Moller a a b

University of North Carolina–Charlotte, United States Valdosta State University, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 8 February 2013 Revised 20 December 2013 Accepted 29 December 2013 Available online 6 January 2014 Keywords: Teacher job satisfaction School culture Organizational culture

a b s t r a c t Teacher job satisfaction is critical to schools’ successful functioning. Using a representative sample of kindergarten teachers from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we investigate the association among professional learning community and teacher collaboration, teacher ethno-racial group, teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch, and teacher job satisfaction. We find that White teachers are significantly less satisfied than African–American and Latino teachers, especially when they teach in majority non-White classrooms. However, the existence of a professional community moderates the negative influence of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch on White teachers’ job satisfaction. In effect, strong professional communities serve as a cushion to bolster teacher job satisfaction. Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In the current educational climate, teachers are under a tremendous amount of public pressure to raise students’ test scores. Teachers are frequently singled out in the popular media for their ostensible role in the decline of American schools. In addition, high stakes testing associated with No Child Left Behind (NCLB)-the twenty-first century’s initial educational reform initiative-has undermined schools’ organizational cultures by altering teachers’ working conditions. The negative consequences have placed immense pressure on teachers, increasing competition among them (Crocco and Costigan, 2006; Lankford et al., 2002; Nichols and Berliner, 2007). As organizations, schools are dependent on having teachers who are satisfied with their jobs and who work with one another to build a workplace community. Dissatisfied teachers may undermine educational goals, and dissatisfaction with teaching conditions may lead to higher teacher absenteeism, stress, and turnover (Perrachione et al., 2008; Renzulli et al., 2011). While there are many factors that may influence the extent to which teachers are satisfied with their jobs, two factors that are particularly important are organizational culture and the socio-demographic composition of the school. First, schools’ organizational cultures, which include the shared assumptions, rituals, values, climate, and behaviors within organizations, are critical because they define how teachers interact with one another and their students (Powers, 2009). There are significant differences in the profile of schools with strong and weak organizational cultures. Schools with strong organizational cultures usually have positive and charismatic leadership at the top, a clear sense of purpose, more formalized organizational structures, a tradition of recognition, appreciation and open communication among all members, collegiality among teachers, and higher expectations for students (Cheng, 1993). Teachers in these schools are also professionally interdependent and approach their work as a collective responsibility and strive to achieve common goals for student learning

⇑ Corresponding author. Address: University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Department of Sociology, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223, United States. Tel.: +1 704 687 7834. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Stearns). 0049-089X/$ - see front matter Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.12.011

E. Stearns et al. / Social Science Research 45 (2014) 56–72

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(Little, 1990). As a result, students are more engaged in these schools and their learning achievement levels are better (Lee and Smith, 1996; Louis et al., 1996). Schools with weaker organizational culture, on the other hand, are characterized by weak leadership, lack of clear organizational purpose, disengaged teachers and students, lack of teacher professionalism, higher turnover, and most importantly poor organizational performance (Cheng, 1993). Studies have suggested that the organizational culture of schools can have important implications for teacher job satisfaction (Gamoran et al., 2000; Lee et al., 1991; Lee and Smith, 1996; Louis and Marks, 1998; Perrachione et al., 2008; Renzulli et al., 2011). In fact, the organizational culture of schools has been found to be a stronger and more consistent predictor of teacher job satisfaction than many measures of teacher characteristics (Culver et al., 1990; Ma and MacMillan, 1999; Moore, 2012; Shen et al., 2012; Weiss, 1999). Second, in addition to organizational culture, various aspects of the socio-demographic composition of the school are associated with teacher job satisfaction. One aspect in particular, namely the increasing diversity of the student population, has received popular and scholarly attention in recent years (Ingersoll and May, 2011a). Much of this attention has been driven by concern over the paucity of teachers of color relative to White teachers, who make up approximately 84% of teachers serving a population of students that is only 59% White (Ingersoll and May, 2011b). Indeed, several studies have indicated the increased challenges in interracial relations that come along with diversity in schools in general, and with teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch in particular (Farkas et al., 1990; McGrady and Reynolds, 2012; Mueller et al., 1999; Renzulli et al., 2011). It is abundantly clear, given other recent research on teacher job satisfaction, that teacher race and the racial composition of the school have interactive influences on job satisfaction (Renzulli et al., 2011). Much of this dissatisfaction may be due to issues surrounding student behavior. Several studies have found evidence suggesting that teachers, especially White teachers, tend to rate the behavior of students from a different race more negatively than that of White students (Downey and Pribesh, 2004; McGrady and Reynolds, 2012). Furthermore, typical student misbehaviors such as disrespect and inattentiveness are significantly related to teacher job dissatisfaction (Friedman, 1995). Similar findings were also reported in Grayson and Alvarez (2008). What is not clear, however, is whether the prior effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch at the school level extend to or underestimate the effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch at the classroom level. In addition, although Renzulli et al. (2011) found that school organizational structure (in this case, whether the school was a charter or traditional school) moderated the effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch, it is yet unclear whether schools’ organization culture might do the same. Given demographic trends, it is critically important that schools and policymakers do what they can to ameliorate the potentially negative effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch on teacher job satisfaction. In this paper we investigate the association between organizational culture, teacher ethno-racial group, and teacher job satisfaction using a nationally representative sample of kindergarten teachers. We focus on Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture, an aspect of organizational culture that includes teachers’ perceptions of two components of the organizational culture – professional community and teacher collaboration. In this paper, we investigate the following research question: do teachers’ perceptions of their schools’ organizational cultures, including the extent to which they are characterized by professional community and teacher collaboration, moderate the influence of race-based factors, such as the match or mismatch between teacher ethno-racial group and classroom ethno-racial composition, on their job satisfaction? 1.1. Teacher satisfaction There is a well-established link between worker satisfaction and various aspects of the organizations where they work (e.g., Pfeffer (1983)). Among teachers, of particular importance among the demographic factors shown to influence teacher job satisfaction are the teacher’s ethno-racial group and the ethno-racial composition of the students in the school.1 With respect to teachers’ ethno-racial group, Renzulli et al. (2011) found that White teachers were slightly more satisfied with their jobs than were teachers of color, results that are echoed in studies of other White workers (Clay-Warner et al., 2005; Tuch and Martin, 1991), as well as teachers (Moore, 2012; Mueller et al., 1999). Yet the relationship between teacher ethno-racial group and job satisfaction is not consistent across schools. In fact, there is a persistent link between school ethno-racial composition and teacher job satisfaction, with those schools with proportionately larger African–American and Latino students populations also having teachers with particularly low levels of satisfaction (Frankenberg, 2006). Indeed, Renzulli et al. (2011) also found that the ethno-racial composition of the school had a significant impact on White teachers’ job satisfaction, such that White teachers in predominantly White schools were more satisfied than White teachers in more diverse schools. This effect was moderated by whether teachers were teaching in charter or traditional schools. Others have found similar findings with respect to the negative impact of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch on job satisfaction (Fairchild et al., 2012), as well as the moderating impact of organizational factors on the relationship between school ethno-racial composition and the lower satisfaction levels of White teachers teaching diverse students (Mueller et al., 1999). Yet all of these studies examine teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch at the school level, not at the classroom level. In other words, they do not include information on which students each teacher sees and interacts with the most in her/his own 1 Although we recognize that there are many social relations in schools among multiple stakeholders, we focus here on the demography of student-teacher relationships, given the important role that the mismatch between school racial composition and teacher race has been shown to play in teacher job satisfaction (Mueller et al., 1999; Renzulli et al., 2011).

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classroom. It is entirely possible that the ethno-racial composition of classrooms does not always reflect the ethno-racial composition of schools, such that these prior studies may, in fact, be underestimating the effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch by using school-level racial composition. There are several reasons, both theoretical and empirical, why we might expect to find that teachers who teach classrooms of children from other ethno-racial groups would be more dissatisfied than teachers who teach classrooms of children of the same ethno-racial group. Many of these reasons are thoroughly described elsewhere (Delpit, 1995; Irvine, 2003; Renzulli et al., 2011), but we summarize them here. From a theoretical perspective, studies of organizational demography emphasize the role of racial prejudice, conditions of contact, and Blalock (1967) concept of group threat. This latter perspective points out the higher levels of conflict that characterize diverse social settings. As Blalock argued, conflict increases as majority group members feel a larger threat from minority group members, threat that increases as the size of the minority group increases (Goyette et al., 2012; Jacobson and Heaton, 2008; Lewis et al., 2011; Quillian, 1995, 1996). Thus, White teachers who have more students from minority groups may feel more threat from those students and hence have lower levels of job satisfaction than White teachers with mostly White students. More empirically, there is a body of literature within the sociology of work that points out the potential pitfalls of racially diverse work settings. Workers in these settings have lower levels of satisfaction than those in more homogeneous settings, findings that are especially pronounced for White workers (Maume and Sebastian, 2007; Tsui et al., 1992; Wharton et al., 2000). Although workers’ relations with other workers may be qualitatively different from those between teachers and students, these results have been echoed in studies of teachers, which have found that the negative effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch on teacher job satisfaction were larger for White teachers than for nonwhite teachers (Mueller et al., 1999; Renzulli et al., 2011). Much of the negative effect of racial diversity on job satisfaction comes in the increased difficulty in interactions of an interracial nature, difficulties that may have their basis in racial prejudice. For example, Downey and Pribesh (2004) found that teachers assess same-race students’ behavior more positively than the behavior of different-race students, highlighting the conflict that can characterize interracial relations in schools. These results are amplified by McGrady and Reynolds (2012), who found that most teachers viewed Asian–American students’ behavior very positively, while perceiving African–American students’ behavior more negatively. These studies suggest that teachers who teach in classrooms with a majority of students of ethno-racial groups different from their own may face cognitive and interpersonal challenges that teachers in more racially homogeneous classrooms may not. Yet another theory leads us to suspect that not all interracial relations are fraught with increased difficulty. In other words, the conditions of contact—i.e., the organizational culture within each school—can lead to varying outcomes and therefore varying levels of association between teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch and teacher job satisfaction (Allport, 1954). Allport’s contact theory suggests that, while negative outcomes are most likely from interracial interactions, positive outcomes can occur under some circumstances. Several of the conditions that Allport (1954) and others (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006; Stephan, 1987; Stephan and Stephan, 1996) identified as being crucial in promoting positive intergroup relations, including support from authority figures and collaborative goals, are aspects of Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture, which we discuss in more detail below. Although the working conditions of the primarily White teachers in high-minority schools, where they are most likely to be ethno-racially mismatched to their students, are potentially ill-suited to the development of high levels of job satisfaction, we hypothesize that an organizational culture that emphasizes positive relations among teachers may be able to offset the negative association between teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch and job satisfaction. High-poverty, racially isolated minority schools tend to have teachers with lower qualifications than low-poverty, racially diverse schools (Clotfelter et al., 2007; Hanushek and Rivkin, 2007; Jackson, 2009; Scafidi et al., 2007). These schools may also be marked by particularly low levels of teacher control over classroom policies and lower levels of perceived safety, two factors that have previously been associated with teacher job satisfaction (Boyd et al., 2011; Fairchild et al., 2012; Ingersoll, 2003). Moreover, while the organizational culture in these schools where White teachers find themselves teaching a majority of different-race students may infrequently be sufficient or supportive enough to weaken the relationship between teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch and teacher job satisfaction, we suspect that it will do so when the organizational culture emphasizes professional community and collaboration, two ideas that we expand on below. 1.1.1. Organizational culture The culture of an organization defines the organization and has three major components. First, artifacts reveal the visible and identifiable structures, processes, and behaviors in an organization. Second, underlying assumptions reflect unconscious and taken-for-granted beliefs and values in the organization. Third, beliefs and values include those values and norms that shape interactions and expectations in the organization (Schein, 2010). Researchers have increasingly focused on shared values and norms across organizations in that these elements of organizational culture are quantifiable (Denison, 1996; O’Reilly et al., 1991). In addition, these values and norms are essential to organizational identity and internal control systems for organizations (Pedersen and Dobbin, 2006; Schein, 2010). They undergird the technical core of schools (Schein, 2010). Our research focuses on values and norms inside elementary schools, understanding these to be quantifiable manifestations of schools’ organizational cultures (Schein, 2010). Teachers are an integral part of generating and diffusing organizational culture within schools. While school administrators and leaders are generally responsible for establishing cultural


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values within schools, teachers must consent to and promote these values (Kruse and Louis, 2009; Schein, 2010). In fact, schools’ organizational cultures can only affect student outcomes through teaching practices (Gamoran et al., 2000). This potential is particularly salient during the elementary years because elementary-age students are more likely to conform to adult values than students in higher grades, who tend to form their own distinctive subcultures (Firestone and Louis, 1999). Therefore, we focus on teachers’ cultures as a component of schools’ organizational cultures. There is a strong and established link between various aspects of organizational culture and teacher job satisfaction (Culver et al., 1990; Lee et al., 1991; Ma and MacMillan, 1999; Moore, 2012; Perrachione et al., 2008; Renzulli et al., 2011; Reyes and Pounder, 1993; Shen et al., 2012; Weiss, 1999). For example, Ma and MacMillan (1999) discovered that organizational culture, which they defined primarily in terms of collegiality, or the extent to which teachers perceived themselves and other teachers as sharing positive attitudes in general and specifically attitudes toward how children learn, played an important role in predicting teacher satisfaction. There is, however, little consensus regarding which aspects of organizational culture are most closely associated with teacher job satisfaction. 1.1.2. Collective pedagogical teacher culture We posit that schools with a Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture are the most effective at encouraging high levels of teacher satisfaction with their jobs. We conceptualize Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture as a culture where teachers perceive (1) a value of strong professional community and (2) a norm of collaboration among teachers where the needs of students are centralized. The concept of Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture is one that is described at length elsewhere (Moller et al., 2013), so we describe only its broad outlines here. We hypothesize that the presence of such a culture will moderate the lower levels of job satisfaction found among some ethno-racial groups and where teachers are ethno-racially mismatched to their students. 1.1.3. Professional community In conceptualizations of Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture, cultural strength is an important dimension because a strong, coherent organizational culture prevents subcultures from undermining the mission of the organization (Schein, 2010). Generally, within schools, the principal identifies the organizational mission and communicates the mission to the faculty. The culture is stronger if the faculty agrees on the mission. The culture is also more community-oriented if teachers feel accepted by each other and if they have a sense of pride or spirit. Prior scholarship has suggested that teachers who are thoroughly socialized into community-oriented school culture (both professional and collegial) have a sense of belonging, attachment, and pride (Anderson, 1982; Wynne, 1980). Another important attribute of professional communities within schools is an orientation toward learning. In essence, schools that focus on professional development provide an atmosphere where teachers are more collaborative (Gamoran et al., 2000). Thus, we contend that teachers sense that they are part of strong professional learning communities when they perceive that there is an agreed upon mission, school pride, an orientation toward learning, and a sense of belonging. 1.1.4. Teacher collaboration This leads to the second main component of Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture: a norm of teacher collaboration. Professional learning communities lay the foundation for teachers to learn from each other through collective understanding as opposed to individualized, fragmented understanding and teaching (McLaughlin and Talbert, 2006). Collaboration reflects an environment where teachers build their lessons cooperatively, eliminating redundancy and increasing compatibility across parts of the curriculum. This collaboration allows teachers to take collective responsibility for students, and it permits teachers to interactively develop the best strategy for teaching (Lee and Smith, 1996; Louis and Marks, 1998; McLaughlin and Talbert, 2006). Organizational cultures that fail to promote collaboration instead encourage teacher isolation, which contributes to teacher dissatisfaction (Hargreaves, 1994; Leithwood et al., 1998; Rosenholtz, 1990). Given the likelihood that cultural features of schools have an important role in teacher satisfaction, we investigate whether the influences of important factors, including teacher collaboration and professional community on teacher satisfaction, vary across teachers of different ethno-racial groups and across schools where those teachers encounter teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch. We hypothesize that the presence of Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture in schools will moderate the effects of classroom ethno-racial composition and teacher ethno-racial group on job satisfaction. 2. Methods and data description Sample: We use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey—Kindergarten (ECLS-K) to test our hypotheses. The data set employed a multistage probability sample design to select a nationally representative sample of children attending kindergarten in 1998–1999. A total of 21,260 children participated in the initial sample, which was collected in the fall of 1998 and the spring of 1999. While the ECLS-K child sample is nationally representative across all the grades, the teacher sample is nationally representative only at the kindergarten level. During the fall of 1998, a census of teachers was taken in each school and each child was linked to one primary teacher in his/her school. New teachers who joined the school after fall 1998 were included in the census of teachers that was conducted in the spring of 1999. All kindergarten teachers irrespective of whether they taught a

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sampled child were asked to complete the teacher questionnaires regarding classroom characteristics, including the racial and ethnic composition of students in each class, various aspects of school environment within which they work, and teachers’ demographic and educational backgrounds. Given the focus of this study, we have restricted our sample to all kindergarten teachers who completed the teacher questionnaire during fall 1998 and spring 1999. Our initial sample consisted of 3150 teachers in 980 schools. We use a two-level hierarchical linear model (HLM), described more fully below, where teachers are nested within schools. For HLM to be an efficient analytic technique, the lower level unit must have more observations than the immediately higher level unit (Bryk and Raudenbush, 1997). The ECLS-K sample has several schools with only one teacher. We eliminate these schools in our analysis and restrict our sample to only those schools with more than two teachers.2 This reduces the sample to 2450 teachers in 500 schools. The final weighted sample with all the predictors ran with 1690 teachers and 390 schools. Although the kindergarten teacher sample is nationally representative in ECLS-K, we preferred it to the School and Staffing Survey (the only other survey that deals with a nationally representative sample of teachers in the United States), because the ECLS-K dataset contains information that we utilize to calculate ethno-racial composition of students in each teacher’s classroom. Additionally, this dataset contains information about a comprehensive set of variables that describes teachers’ perception about the different aspects of school organizational culture. Also the ECLS-K dataset provides information about a range of control variables such as teachers’ salary and classroom conditions that are not available in SASS and have been found to be linked to their job satisfaction. Finally, our analyses (not shown here) show that ability grouping is prevalent in kindergarten with grouping being used in 40% of kindergarten classrooms compared to 70% in first grade and 50% in third grade. This finding implies that the experiences of kindergarten teachers with regard to racial mismatch may not be very different from those teachers teaching in higher grades. 2.1. Statistical issues One of the challenges we encountered while using ECLS-K is the problem of missing data. In order to tackle this problem, we employed a multiple imputation approach. Multiple imputations determine a set of values after examining the statistically appropriate distribution of all possible values in the sample. By using this approach, we minimized any bias that may exist between observed and unobserved values. The entire process helped in reducing the uncertainty that is associated with any imputation (Allison, 2002; Schafer, 1997). We impute all variables in our dataset, including the dependent and the key independent variables using five imputations. We imputed scaled variables with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method because we have an arbitrary missing data pattern (Schafer, 1997). Categorical variables are imputed with a logistic regression method. Within the kindergarten wave, teacher and school data are imputed separately to ensure efficiency: fall 1998 and spring 1999 teacher data are also imputed separately. In addition, only variables with less than 20% missing data within a particular wave are imputed. We also check if the strategy of using five imputations is relatively more efficient instead of using infinitely many numbers of imputations. The imputation is greater than 93% efficient for all imputed variables.3 Our comparison of the imputed sample with the sample prior to imputation reveals that the final sample is comparable to the initial sample on several key teacher characteristics including teacher ethno-racial group and gender. 2.2. Variables 2.2.1. Teacher satisfaction The dependent variable used in our paper is teacher satisfaction. For the purposes of this paper, we treat job satisfaction as a unitary concept and assume that it is possible for individuals to balance satisfaction with some aspects of their jobs against dissatisfaction with certain other aspects and in the process arrive at a combined satisfaction with the job as a whole (Kalleberg, 1977). Following Kalleberg, 1977, we conceptualize job satisfaction as an ‘‘overall affective orientation on the part of individuals toward work roles which they are presently occupying’’ (p. 126). Such a conceptualization allows us to distinguish between overall job satisfaction from satisfaction with specific dimensions of those work roles. We use an exploratory factor analysis technique to combine teacher responses to three different but related items. These items include: a) whether the teacher enjoys teaching, b) whether the teacher would teach again and c) the teacher’s perception about making a difference through teaching (see Appendix A for more detail). This measurement is consistent with the approach adopted by other researchers who have examined teacher satisfaction, including Lee et al. (1991) and Renzulli et al. (2011). Our measure of teacher satisfaction combines the two related but distinct concepts of teachers’ sense of efficacy (for example, ‘‘I can make a difference through teaching’’) and satisfaction (‘‘teacher enjoys teaching and would teach again’’). 2 In separate analyses (not shown) we test each of our models on the full sample of schools including those with two or less number of teachers. The results generally do not differ with only one exception. The interaction between teacher professional community and White teachers in Black majority classrooms is no longer statistically significant when all schools are included in the sample. This suggests that the limited number of level-1 units has affected the reliability of the level-2 slope coefficients. 3 The relative efficiency of using m imputations instead of infinitely many imputations is approximately a function of k and the number of imputation m: 1/ (1 + k/m). k represents the fraction of missing information for each variable. It is a function of relative increase in variance due to non-response and the degrees of freedom. http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/sas/seminars/missing_data/part1.htm; http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/statug/63033/HTML/default/ viewer.htm#statug_mianalyze_sect013.htm.

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E. Stearns et al. / Social Science Research 45 (2014) 56–72 Table 1 Factor analysis results for teacher satisfaction – communalities and factor loadings. Items

Communalities Initial

Extraction (variance explained)

Factor loadings (correlations)

I really enjoy my present teaching job I am certain I am making a difference in the lives of the children I teach If I could start over, I would choose teaching again as my career

.594 .485 .516

.796 .573 .615

.89 .76 .78

Total Variance of the Variables Explained by the Factor

Initial Eigen values Total % of Variance 6.861 100

Factor 1

Cumulative% 100

Notes: (a) Extraction Method: Maximum Likelihood and (b) 1 factor extracted with 3 iterations.

The ECLS-K captures teacher responses to the above questions using an ordinal five category response scale that ranges from strongly disagree to strongly agree. We maintained the ordinal nature of the variables while combining them into a factor by running an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) on an unrotated polychoric correlation matrix. Table 1 shows that each of the three items loaded on a single factor with individual factor loadings greater than .7. These factor loadings show that correlations between the three items capturing different dimensions of teacher satisfaction and the single factor vary from .76 to .89. Correspondingly, communalities under the extraction column in Table 1 show that the factor explains 57% to 90% of variation in individual items of teacher satisfaction. We also checked the internal consistency among the three items measuring teacher satisfaction using Cronbach’s Alpha (.73). 2.2.2. Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture We conceptualize Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture as a school workplace environment where teachers perceive (1) a strong professional community-orientation and (2) teacher collaboration. A strong professional community is measured with five variables: (1) teachers have school spirit; (2) leadership has communicated a shared school mission; (3) teachers agree on a school mission; (4) teachers feel accepted and respected as colleagues; and (5) teachers are constantly engaged in learning. The norm of teacher collaboration is calculated with three variables that measure the extent that individual teachers perceive that teachers within the school: (1) collaborate on lesson planning; (2) collaborate on curriculum development; and (3) meet to discuss children. Each of these variables is gathered from the teacher questionnaire and they are described in Appendix B. We measure Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). We use exploratory factor analysis because the literature does not clearly articulate the extent that professional communities are collaborative. There is an assumption in the literature that they flow together, but we test this assumption through maximum likelihood exploratory factor analysis.4 Each of these variables is ordinal; therefore, we ran the EFA on a polychoric correlation matrix.5 Our analysis produced two factors. The first factor represents strong professional learning communities (as the first five measures presented in Appendix B have a moderate to strong loading on this factor), and the second factor represents collaborative, child-oriented planning among teachers (the final three measures in Appendix B have a moderate to strong loading on this factor). We call our factors ‘‘Professional Community’’ and ‘‘Teacher Collaboration.’’ The measure of CPTC includes measures of both teacher values (professional community) and activities (collaboration), with each school in the sample assigned one value on each of those measures. Results from the factor analysis are presented in Table 2. The lack of correspondence between the collaboration variables and the remaining community variables suggests that schools with a professional learning community are not necessarily collaborative.6 This is an important finding, given that previous research on organizational cultures suggests that schools must have both a professional learning community and norm of teacher collaboration to be effective (Wood, 2007). These findings indicate that schools with strong professional communities do not necessarily also have a norm of teacher collaboration, and vice versa. 2.2.3. Ethno-racial mismatch in the classroom Our focus on ethno-racial mismatch at the classroom level extends the analyses presented by Renzulli et al. (2011) who used information on the ethno-racial composition of schools. Instead, we create a measure of ethno-racial mismatch between teachers and students at the classroom level. Following Renzulli et al. (2011)’s categorization for schools, we divide the ethno-racial composition of classrooms into six different categories. These are White majority, Black majority, Hispanic 4 The EFA is conducted with an oblique rotation (promax) because theoretically, factors should be correlated. In addition, oblique rotations are generally favorable to orthogonal rotations (Conway and Huffcutt, 2003; Fabrigar et al., 1999). 5 Polychoric correlation is an appropriate measure of the strength of the relationship among ordinal variables. It estimates the correlation between theoretically continuous latent variables based on observations from ordinal variables. 6 To further examine the robustness of the factors, we tested the two factor solution through confirmatory factor analysis. We fit models with goodness of fit and CFI indices above .98 and RMSEA below .06. The results from the EFA and CFA were used to create factor scores. The EFA and CFA scores are correlated above .97 in each time period for the first factor, and they are correlated above .9 for the second factor. This suggests that the factor scores created from the EFA represent constructs that fit the data well.

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Table 2 Factor analysis results for collective pedagogical teacher culture – communalities and factor loadings. Items

Communalities Initial

Extraction (variance explained)

Factor loadings (correlations)

Teacher’s perception that staff have school spirit Teacher’s perception that administrators communicate a mission Teacher’s perception that teachers agree on school mission Teacher feels accepted and respected as a colleague Teacher feels that staff are continually learning and seeking new ideas Frequency that teachers meet to collaborate on lesson planning Frequency that teachers meet to collaborate on curriculum development Frequency that teachers meet to discuss a child

.465 .425 .481 .476 .528 .459 .463 .210

.566 .387 .464 .548 .619 .657 .666 .257

.75 .62 .68 .74 .78 .81 .82 .50

Total Variance of the Variables Explained by the Factor

Initial Eigen values Total % of Variance 5.887 59 4.022 41

Factor 1 (Professional Community) Factor 2 (Collaboration)

Cumulative% 59.4 100

Notes: (a) Extraction Method: Maximum Likelihood and (b) 2 factors extracted with 5 iterations.

majority, Asian majority, other category consisting of Native Americans and Hawaiian native, and a non-majority category wherein no single group makes up more than 60% of the students.7 Next, we utilize information about teacher ethno-racial group to create measures of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch in kindergarten classrooms. For example, WT_WC refers to White teachers who teach in White majority classrooms in kindergarten. 2.2.4. Control variables In our analysis, we use several control variables that are selected based on the literature and are grouped into two categories: teacher-level control variables and school-level controls. We control for teacher demographics, including teacher gender and age. In addition, we use some typical measures of teacher quality such as teacher experience (in years), highest education level, type of certification (highest level available vs. regular, alternative, provisional, temporary, or no certification), full-time vs. part-time status, and salary. We also include some measures that tap into working conditions. These measures include the percentage of students who are classified as limited English proficient (LEP) and the teacher’s number of teaching hours per day. Following Ingersoll (2003), we also measure teachers’ perceptions of the amount of autonomy they have in the classroom and in the school. We include two measures in this regard. The first measure is teacher perception about the degree of control they exercise over school policy. Teachers are asked about the extent of influence they manage to exercise over school policy matters in areas such as student discipline, on decisions about spending school funds, and assignment of children in classes. The second measure captures teacher perception about the degree of control they exercise over classroom policy matters. Teachers are asked about the extent of control they get to exercise in classroom matters involving areas such as selecting skills to be taught, deciding about teaching techniques, and disciplining children. Response categories range from ‘‘no influence/no control’’ to ‘‘a great deal of influence/control.’’ We dichotomize these variables to contrast teachers who feel that they have a ‘‘great deal’’ of influence/control (1) and those who feel they have less than great deal of influence/control (0). In addition to ensuring meaningful comparison across groups, our decision to combine several categories together is also influenced by the uneven distribution of observations across groups. Finally, we use several school-level controls because school structures can have an impact on school culture (Bidwell et al., 1997). These are school type (regular public school vs. schools of choice, which includes private, charter, and magnet schools), size (total school enrollment), location (urban/suburban/rural, with suburban as the reference category) and region of the country (Northeast/Midwest/South/West, with South as the reference category). In the ECLS-K, administrators were also asked whether the school provides incentives to the teachers and whether the school has adequate safety.8 Further information on these control variables can be found in Table 3, while means and standard deviations can be found in Table 4. 3. Analysis method We use Hierarchical Linear Modeling (multi-level modeling) to estimate the effects of professional learning community and teacher collaboration, teacher ethno-racial group, and teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch at the classroom level on teacher job satisfaction. The nature of the ECLS-K kindergarten teacher data is such that teachers are nested within schools. This nesting violates the key assumptions of independence of observations in conventional statistical analysis because teachers who are in the same school may be more similar compared to teachers who teach in a different school. Clustering of cases 7

We tested alternative specifications as well, using cut-points of 50%, 70%, and 80%. Our substantive results did not change. We considered using principal characteristics as well, but as Shen et al. (2012) did not find a significant reduction in variance in teacher satisfaction when including principal background variables, we decided not to use them. 8


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Table 3 Description of variables predicting kindergarten teachers’ job satisfaction from the early childhood longitudinal survey of kindergarten teachers in the United States in 1998–1999. Dependent Variable Teacher satisfaction

Independent Variables Teacher professional community

Teacher collaboration

Teacher-Level Control Variables Teacher Demographics Teacher gender Teacher age Racial Mismatch in Classroom (Reference Category: Black Teachers in Black Majority Classrooms: BT_BS) White Teacher in White Majority Classroom (WT_WS) White Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (WT_BS) White Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (WT_HS) White Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (WT_OT1) White Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (WT_NMJ) Black Teacher in White Majority Classroom (BT_WS) Black Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (BT_HS) Black Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (BT_OT1) Black Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (BT_NMJ) Hispanic Teacher in White Majority Classroom (HT_WS) Hispanic Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (HT_BS) Hispanic Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (HT_HS) Hispanic Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (HT_OT1) Hispanic Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (HT_NMJ) Teacher Quality Teacher experience (in years) Teacher highest education level Teacher has highest available certification Teacher has regular certification (reference category) Teacher has temporary certification Teacher full-time status Teacher log salary Teacher Autonomy Degree of teacher influence over school policy Degree of teacher control over classroom policy Teacher Working Conditions Percentage of students classified as Limited English Proficient (LEP) in class Number of hours the teacher teaches per day School Level Control Variables School type (School of Choice vs. others) School size (total school enrollment) School location: urban School location: suburban (reference category) School location: rural School region: North-east School region: Mid-west School region: South (reference category) School region: West School provides incentive to teachers School has adequate safety

Factor of three items: teacher enjoy teaching, teacher would teach again and teacher makes a difference (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree)

Factor of five items: staff has school spirit, teachers agree on school mission, administrator communicates a central mission, teacher feel accepted among staff as a colleague, and teachers continually seek new ideas and learning (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree) Factor of three items: teacher collaborate on lesson planning, curriculum and collectively discuss the progress of students (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree)

Dummy Variable (1 = Female 0 = Male) Age of teachers (in years)

Dummy Variable = 1 if a White teacher is teaching P 60% of White students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a White teacher is teaching P 60% of Black students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a White teacher is teaching P 60% of Hispanic students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a White teacher is teaching P 60% of other category students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a White teacher is teaching P 60% of non-majority group students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Black teacher is teaching P 60% of White students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Black teacher is teaching P 60% of Hispanic students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Black teacher is teaching P 60% of Other category students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Black teacher is teaching P 60% of non-majority students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Hispanic teacher is teaching P 60% of White students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Hispanic teacher is teaching P 60% of Black students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Hispanic teacher is teaching P 60% of Hispanic students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Hispanic student is teaching P 60% of Other category students in class Dummy Variable = 1 if a Hispanic student is teaching P 60% of non-majority students in class Number of years the teacher has been teaching in the current school Dummy variable (1 = Master’s and higher) Dummy variable (1 = the highest certification available: permanent or long term) Dummy variable (1 = regular certification but less than the highest available) Dummy variable (1 = temporary, probationary, emergency, alternative) Dummy variable (1 = full time employment) Log of teacher base salary Dummy variable (1 = moderate to great deal of influence) Dummy variable (1 = moderate to great deal of control) Percentage of students with Limited English Proficiency in class Number of hours the teacher teaches per day

Dummy variable (1 = Choice school) Total school enrollment Dummy variable (1 = Urban School) Dummy variable (1 = Suburban school) Dummy variable (1 = Rural School) Dummy variable (1 = North-east) Dummy variable (1 = Mid-west) Dummy variable (1 = South) Dummy variable (1 = West) Dummy variable (1 = School provides incentive to teachers) Dummy variable (1 = School has adequate safety)

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Table 4 Means and standard deviation of variables predicting kindergarten teachers’ job satisfaction from the early childhood longitudinal survey of kindergarten teacher in the United States in 1998–1999. Variables

Mean

SD

.03

.02

Independent Variables School Organizational Culture Teacher professional community (Factor Score) Teacher collaboration (Factor Score)

.02 .10

.02 .02

Racial Mismatch in Classroom (Reference Category: Black Teachers in Black Majority Classrooms: BT_BS) White Teacher in White Majority Classroom (WT_WS) White Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (WT_BS) White Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (WT_HS) White Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (WT_OT1) White Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (WT_NMJ) Black Teacher in White Majority Classroom (BT_WS) Black Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (BT_HS) Black Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (BT_OT1) Black Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (BT_NMJ) Hispanic Teacher in White Majority Classroom (HT_WS) Hispanic Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (HT_BS) Hispanic Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (HT_HS) Hispanic Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (HT_OT1) Hispanic Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (HT_NMJ)

.46 .06 .05 .02 .20 .01 .00 .02 .02 .01 .00 .04 .02 .02

Teacher Level Control Variables Teacher Demographics Teacher gender Teacher age

.97 40.7

Teacher Quality Teacher experience (in years) Teacher highest education level Teacher has highest available certification Teacher has temporary certification Teacher full-time status Teacher log salary

8.53 .38 .65 .13 .95 10.44

Teacher Autonomy Degree of teacher control over school policy Degree of teacher control over classroom policy

.21 .56

Teacher Working Conditions Percentage of students classified as Limited English Proficient (LEP) in class Number of hours the teacher teaches per day

2.38 5.31

School Level Control Variables School type (school of choice vs. others) School size (total school enrollment) School location: urban School location: rural School region: North-east School region: Mid-west School region: West School provides incentive to teachers School has adequate safety

1.90 107.5 .35 .23 .07 .17 .23 .13 .52

Dependent Variable Teachers’ Job Satisfaction (Factor Score)

.22 .16

.01

.10 .04

1.62

Note: N Teachers = 1690; N Schools = 385

around higher level of units produces biased coefficients because errors are correlated and there may be group-specific error variances. The multi-level regression model addresses the error in estimation and also produces accurate standard errors for making inferences. Calculations of the intra-class correlation coefficient show that 16% of the variance in the dependent variable is accounted for by between-school factors and the remaining 74% by within-school factors. All of the independent and control variables are grand-mean centered. 4. Results Models shown in the tables test our hypotheses. First, we examine whether there are ethno-racial differences in teacher job satisfaction. Table 5 (Model 1) shows that, contrary to findings from earlier papers, White teachers have significantly lower levels of job satisfaction than African–American teachers (the reference group), while Latino teachers’ levels of job

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Table 5 Slopes and standard errors from two-level hierarchical linear model predicting kindergarten teachers’ job satisfaction from the early childhood longitudinal survey of kindergarten teacher in the United States in 1998–1999. Model 1 Estimate Intercept

.01 (.02)

Independent Variables Teacher professional community Teacher collaboration Teacher professional community* Teacher collaboration Teacher professional community*White Teachers Teacher Level Control Variables Teacher Demographics Teacher is Asian–American Teacher is White Teacher is Hispanic Teacher is from other race Teacher gender Teacher age

Model 2 Estimate .08 (.18)

.36 (.03)*** .00 (.02) .06 (.03)* .16 (.06)*

.38 .16 .01 .33

(.15)* (.07)* (.10) (.12)**

.42 (.18)* .39 (.08)*** .07 (.13) .60 (.13)*** .21 (.15) .01 (.00)**


.00 (.00) .02 (.04) .16 (.05)** .09 (.07) .13 (.11) .02 (.08)


.02 (.05) .15 (.04)***

Teacher Working Conditions Percentage of African–American students in class Percentage of Latino students in class Percentage of students classified as Limited English Proficient (LEP) in class Number of hours the teacher teaches per day

.00 (.00) .00 (.00) .00 (.01) .02 (.01)

School Level Control Variables School type (school of Choice vs. others) School size (total school enrollment) School location: urban School location: rural School region: North-east School region: Mid-west School region: West Percentage of White students in school School provides incentive to teachers School has adequate safety

.10 (.08) .00 (.00) .01 (.06) .01 (.07) .24 (.09)* .01 (.07) .24 (.07)*** .00 (.00)* .02 (.07) .05 (.05)

N = 1890 teachers and 413 schools; Standard Errors in Parentheses. p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001. *

satisfaction do not differ significantly from those of African–Americans. Further testing of these differences reveals that White teachers’ job satisfaction levels are also significantly below those of Latino teachers (results not shown). To test our hypotheses regarding the interplay of teacher ethno-racial group and professional teacher community, we included interactions between teacher professional community and teacher ethno-racial group. Statistically significant results are shown in Model 2 of Table 5: these results are consistent with predictions derived from Ingersoll (2003). Model 2 shows that there is a significant interaction between teacher ethno-racial group and professional community. Although White teachers are significantly less satisfied with their jobs than African–American teachers, the results in Fig. 1 indicate that their job satisfaction is notably tied to the level of professional community in the school. It appears that higher levels of professional community in schools bolster the job satisfaction of White teachers. As Fig. 1 shows, all teachers are more satisfied in schools where they perceive higher levels of professional community, but the job satisfaction levels of White teachers are especially associated with the level of professional community. In essence, the gap in teacher job satisfaction between White and African–American teachers is largest in schools with the lowest levels of professional community. Here, we see, as we had predicted, professional community moderating the association between teacher ethno-racial group and teacher job satisfaction.

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Fig. 1. Teacher satisfaction by professional community and White teachers.

Table 6 Slopes and standard errors from two-level hierarchical model predicting kindergarten teachers’ job satisfaction by teacher– student racial mismatch in classroom. Racial Mismatch in Classroom (Reference Category: Black Teachers in Black Majority Classrooms: BT_BS)

Estimate

Intercept White Teacher in White Majority Classroom (WT_WS) White Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (WT_BS) White Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (WT_HS) White Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (WT_OT1) White Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (WT_NMJ) Black Teacher in White Majority Classroom (BT_WS) Black Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (BT_HS) Black Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (BT_OT1) Black Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (BT_NMJ) Hispanic Teacher in White Majority Classroom (HT_WS) Hispanic Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (HT_BS) Hispanic Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (HT_HS) Hispanic Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (HT_OT1) Hispanic Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (HT_NMJ)

.03 (.02) .22 (.07)** .33 (.11)** .13 (.11) .28 (.32) .01 (.08) .40 (.17)* .24 (.28) .94 (.81) .18 (.18) .44 (.25) .41 (.34) .16 (.11) .61 (.80) .32 (.17)

N = 2050 teachers and 470 schools; Standard Errors in Parentheses. p < .001 p < .05. ** p < .01. *** *

Next, we turn to the question of whether ethno-racial differences in teacher satisfaction might also be influenced by ethno-racial mismatch between teachers and their students at the classroom level. Here, we use Black teachers teaching in Black majority classrooms as the reference group. Table 6 shows that compared to Black teachers teaching in Black majority classrooms, White teachers teaching in White majority classrooms are significantly more satisfied with their jobs, on average. Also, White teachers teaching in Black majority classrooms are significantly less satisfied with their jobs when compared to Black teachers teaching in Black majority classes. We predicted these results on the basis of various racial conflict theories and prior research findings. Interestingly, we also find that Black teachers teaching in White majority classrooms are significantly more satisfied with their jobs compared to Black teachers teaching Black majority classes.9 9 We also test a collapsed version of the above model (results available from authors) and find that compared to Black teachers teaching in Black majority classrooms, White teachers in majority White classrooms continue to be more satisfied. Additionally, White teachers in non-White majority classrooms are significantly less satisfied and Black teachers in non-Black majority classrooms are significantly more satisfied when compared with Black teachers who teach in majority Black classrooms. This indicates that the results are reliable even when we collapse the various racial and ethnic categories.

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In separate supplemental analyses (not shown here), we change the reference category to White teachers teaching in majority White classrooms. We find that White teachers teaching in majority Black classrooms are significantly less satisfied with their jobs compared to White teachers teaching in majority White classrooms. Additionally, White teachers who teach in kindergarten classrooms where no single ethno-racial group constitute the majority are less satisfied with their jobs as compared to White teachers who teach in majority White classes.

Table 7 Slopes and standard errors from two-level hierarchical model predicting kindergarten teachers’ job satisfaction by school culture and racial mismatch in classroom. Model 1 Estimate

Model 2 Estimate

Intercept

.15 (.17)

.14 (.17)

Independent Variables School Organizational Culture Teacher professional community Teacher collaboration

.36 (.03)*** .01 (.03)

.36 (.03)*** .01 (.03)

Racial Mismatch in Classroom (Reference Category: Black Teachers in Black Majority Classrooms: BT_BS) White Teacher in White Majority Classroom (WT_WS) White Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (WT_BS) White Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (WT_HS) White Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (WT_OT1) White Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (WT_NMJ) Black Teacher in White Majority Classroom (BT_WS) Black Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (BT_HS) Black Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (BT_OT1) Black Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (BT_NMJ) Hispanic Teacher in White Majority Classroom (HT_WS) Hispanic Teacher in Black Majority Classroom (HT_BS) Hispanic Teacher in Hispanic Majority Classroom (HT_HS) Hispanic Teacher in Other Majority Classroom (HT_OT1) Hispanic Teacher in Non-Majority Classroom (HT_NMJ)

.11 (.08) .34 (.14)* .08 (.14) .21 (.30) .12 (.09) .40 (.17)* .44 (.57) .90 (.90) .16 (.20) .35 (.25) .72 (.42) .32 (.15)* .58 (.91) .34 (.17)

.12 (.08) .27 (.13)* .08 (.14) .21 (.30) .11 (.09) .40 (.17)* .46 (.57) .90 (.90) .17 (.20) .36 (.25) .71 (.42) .32 (.15)* .57 (.91) .34 (.17)

Interaction Effects Teacher professional community*White Teachers in Black Majority Classrooms Teacher Level Control Variables Teacher Demographics Teacher gender Teacher age

.21 (.16) .01 (.00)

.19 (.16) .01 (.00)


.00 (.00) .03 (.05) .17 (.05)** .11 (.07) .11 (.11) .01 (.08)

.00 (.00) .03 (.05) .17 (.05)** .11 (.07) .10 (.11) .01 (.08)


.01 (.05) .15 (.04)***

.01 (.05) .15 (.04)***

.01 (.01) .01 (.02)

.01 (.01) .01 (.02)

.09 (.09) .00 (.00) .01 (.06) .03 (.07) .20 (.10)* .03 (.07) .19 (.07)* .02 (.07) .02 (.05)

.08 (.09) .00 (.00) .02 (.06) .03 (.07) .20 (.10)* .03 (.07) .19 (.07)* .02 (.07) .02 (.05)

Teacher Working Conditions Percentage of students classified as Limited English Proficient (LEP) in class Number of hours the teacher teaches per day School Level Control Variables School type (school of Choice vs. others) School size (total school enrollment) School location: urban School location: rural School region: North-east School region: Mid-west School region: West School provides incentive to teachers School has adequate safety N = 1690 teachers and 385 schools; Standard Errors in Parentheses. p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001. *

.29 (.13)*

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Fig. 2. Teacher satisfaction by professional community and racial composition of class.

Finally, in Table 7 we combine both the variables capturing ethno-racial mismatch between students and their teachers in class and the measures of teacher professional community. With regard to the effect of ethno-racial mismatch in the classroom on teachers’ job satisfaction, we find results that are largely consistent with those from Table 6, indicating that the patterns hold even with the introduction of the other variables meant to measure working conditions and school culture. Compared to Black teachers who teach in Black majority classes, White teachers teaching in Black majority classrooms are significantly less satisfied with their jobs. Hispanic teachers teaching in Hispanic majority classes are more satisfied than Black teachers teaching in Black majority classes. Finally, we also test the hypothesis that professional community and teacher collaboration might provide the conditions under which the negative effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch might be mitigated. In Model 2 (Table 7), we find that the extent of professional community in a school significantly moderates the association between job satisfaction and the influence of teaching in ethno-racially mismatched classrooms for White teachers with Black students.10 As Fig. 2 demonstrates, where professional community levels are perceived to be low, the association between ethno-racial mismatch and job satisfaction is quite large for White teachers. White teachers who are not teaching in majority Black classrooms have significantly higher levels of job satisfaction than those White teachers who are. As levels of professional community increase, however, the gap in teachers’ job satisfaction among White teachers who teach in predominantly Black classrooms and White teachers who do not teach in majority Black classrooms closes to the extent that the former group of teachers report marginally higher levels of job satisfaction compared to the latter group. In other words, in those schools where teachers feel that they are most accepted and that the staff has school spirit and agrees on the a school mission, where the administrator communicates that mission, and where teachers are continually learning and seeking new ideas, ethno-racially mismatched classrooms seem to matter less in predicting job satisfaction for White teachers. Again, we see professional community, which measures relations among teachers, moderating the impact of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch.

5. Discussion and conclusions Teachers have tough jobs in today’s educational climate. Information regarding their job performance, especially that information coming from outside the schools, frequently decreases teacher morale and undermines job satisfaction. Calls from education reformers to address the culture of the school have not found the key aspects of organizational culture that should be addressed. Our work in this paper, however, highlights two aspects of organizational culture – aspects that we term Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture – and shows their positive and significant associations with teacher job satisfaction among this nationally representative sample of kindergarten teachers. Furthermore, teacher perceptions of one these aspects of organizational culture—professional community—is shown to moderate the impact of other aspects, including teacher ethno-racial group and the ethno-racial composition of the classroom, on teacher job satisfaction. Below, we discuss the implications of these findings. 10 We tested interactions between collaboration and teacher race, as well as an interaction between collaboration and teacher-student racial mismatch, and found no statistically significant results.


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The findings of the present study allow us to directly test the implications of inter-racial relations within organizations as indicated by the conflict and contact theories. These two theories provide an important framework for the present study. The findings support the key arguments put forth by these two theories. Consistent with the conflict theory, the study finds higher levels of job dissatisfaction among White teachers who teach in predominantly minority student classrooms. The increased job dissatisfaction could be due to White teachers’ perceived threat from minority group members stemming from their own racial prejudices, or due to behavioral problems—whether real or perceived—among minority students in classrooms. Indeed, studies by Downey and Pribesh (2004) and McGrady and Reynolds (2012) highlight that White teachers tend to perceive African–American and Latino students’ behavior more negatively compared to White and Asian–American students. Higher levels of dissatisfaction among White teachers teaching in predominantly non-White classrooms could also be due to escalating pressures from parents of minority students (Shephard and Smith, 1988; Stipek and Byler, 1997). These studies note that minority parents’ expectations, which emphasize the development of basic skills rather than a more holistic view of child development, can be at odds with White teachers’ own values and beliefs about what constitutes appropriate instruction (Delpit, 1995; Rescorla et al., 1990; Spidell-Rusher et al., 1992; Stipek and Byler, 1997; Stipek et al., 1992). The conflict between views of appropriate foci for kindergarten instruction is further complicated by the pressures of accountability and standardization, which also emphasize the development of basic skills. Thus, teachers may be forced to emphasize basic skills against their own inclinations to meet the expectations of parents, school leadership and districts. This pressure has led to higher levels of job dissatisfaction, particularly among many White teachers (Shephard and Smith, 1988; Stipek and Byler, 1997; West et al., 1993). The study’s findings also support the basic tenets of Allport’s contact theory. The finding that organizational culture of schools can nullify some of the negative effects of ethno-racial mismatch between teachers and students in the classroom context on teachers’ job satisfaction lends support to Allport’s hypothesis that ‘‘conditions of contact’’ are important determinants of outcomes in all interracial relationships. In the era of accountability, when teachers are increasingly finding themselves under pressure from principals, districts, parents and peers to prepare each child entering kindergarten for the rigors of the next grades, a strong school culture that can promote a sense of shared understanding and professional community among teachers and with the leadership can also ameliorate the potentially negative effects of teacher–student ethno-racial mismatch. Therein lies the significance of this work. Teacher job dissatisfaction, in that it is associated with stress, lower morale, and higher turnover can be detrimental to schools’ functioning. The most ambitious and well implemented reform efforts are unlikely to take hold in organizations that experience high levels of faculty turnover. However, some high minority schools—those schools where White teachers are especially likely to have a ethno-racial mismatch with the majority of their students—experience total teacher turnover in a single year (Ronfeldt et al., 2011). Therefore, those looking to reform schools should consider strategies for increasing teacher satisfaction, a goal that we suggest could be accomplished by focusing on supporting the development and maintenance of one aspect of Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture—a professional community. Schools that foster the development of a professional community would emphasize hiring and training competent administrators who are capable of clearly communicating goals to school staff, as well as obtaining staff buy-in for those goals. They would also include efforts to build communities among teachers at the same schools, to heighten trust among those individuals, and to emphasize collegiality. These efforts might also encourage teachers to seek new ideas and to learn from each other. Of course all studies have limitations and this one is no different. A dataset ideally suited to studying teacher job satisfaction among elementary school teachers would include more teachers than those at the kindergarten level. We considered using teachers from the follow-up waves of the ECLS-K but, although the students represent a nationally representative sample of students, the teachers are not nationally representative. Therefore, we present only the results for kindergarten teachers. Other datasets with nationally representative samples of teachers lack information on the classroom composition measures that are key to this project. Because our study sample consists of only kindergarten teachers due to data limitations, it is pertinent to point out the special nature of kindergarten teaching and teachers. This is because kindergarten education has experienced significant transformation for the past two decades due to growing demands for standardization and accountability as a basis for educational reform (Jeynes, 2006; Russell, 2011; Shephard and Smith, 1988). The kindergarten education model that once emphasized children’s social, emotional, and moral development through play times and child-initiated activities in an unstructured setting has transitioned into more formal structured instructions focused on preparing children for the academic rigors of first grade through worksheets, math drills, and standardized tests (Russell, 2011). The shifting goals of kindergarten education from a developmental focus to an academic learning focus during the accountability era have also affected kindergarten teachers’ beliefs about appropriate practices and instructional strategies and have affected their job satisfaction (Stipek and Byler, 1997). Kindergarten teachers who teach in schools with an ‘‘accountability culture’’ are not only facing greater pressure from parents, principals and school districts, but also from fellow teachers teaching in higher grades. This is because of the unintended consequences of accountability that has forced higher grade teachers to shift what were next-grade expectations into lower grades (Stipek and Byler, 1997). Kindergarten educators are facing challenges that are very similar to the challenges faced by upper elementary, middle and high school teachers. In fact, the extent of the problem may be much more severe among teachers in higher grades as studies have shown higher levels of dissatisfaction among

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higher grade teachers compared to teachers teaching in elementary grades (Bogler, 2002; Kearney, 2008). The study’s findings, therefore, hold a great deal of relevance to later grades. Future research should consider extending this work to teachers of children in more advanced grades. Despite these issues, our findings are potentially pertinent for teachers from all racial and ethnic backgrounds working in schools with all combinations of student ethno-racial compositions. But they are especially important for those who teach in what tend to be the poorest schools. Given that the largest numbers of US teachers are Whites, our results about White teachers’ dissatisfaction are particularly troubling, especially so because kindergarten teachers, in being matched with the youngest students, are experiencing the leading edge of the country’s demographic shift from a majority White to a more diverse society (Frankenberg, 2006; Orfield and Lee, 2007). Furthermore, given that those White teachers are the most dissatisfied if they teach in classrooms with high minority populations, overall teacher dissatisfaction is most acute in the schools with the largest concentrations of low income minority youth. In fact, we also find that Black teachers teaching in majority Black classrooms are significantly less satisfied than they are teaching in majority White classrooms. This finding contradicts Renzulli et al. (2011) finding that shows Black teachers teaching in schools with students of other ethno-racial groups are no more or less satisfied than Black teachers teaching in schools with majority Black students. It is not surprising that the problems caused by high teacher turnover and disproportionate numbers of low quality teachers occur in schools attended by low-income minority youth (Jackson, 2009; Lankford et al., 2002). The findings presented in this paper suggest that the problems of teacher dissatisfaction thought to arise from the ethnoracial mismatch between students and teachers may well have roots in something else: the absence of the kind of professional culture that nourishes all teachers—irrespective of their own and their students’ ethno-racial groups—to perform to their potential. The findings further suggest the importance of looking at the interplay between what happens in the classroom with the characteristics of the broader culture of the organization. From a policy standpoint, the issue of teacher satisfaction may attain more attention if it can be shown that teacher satisfaction is also associated with higher student achievement – a topic that has attracted more rhetoric than rigorous empirical analyses (Ostroff, 1992). Therefore, future research will need to address this issue in a rigorous manner. The significance of this paper’s findings lies in several areas, however. Our results suggest that reforms that treat teachers as professionals will likely result in higher levels of job satisfaction, even where other factors suggest that they would have lower levels of job satisfaction. Thus, our results point to the need to pay attention to both organizational culture and the way that school structure interacts with culture to influence teacher job satisfaction. Acknowledgments The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A100822 to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education. Appendix A. Measures of teacher satisfaction 1. I really enjoy my present teaching job 2. I am certain I am making a difference in the lives of the children I teach 3. If I could start over, I would choose teaching again as my career Responses to the above three questions are captured through a five-point response scale: 1 2 3 4 5

Appendix B. Measures of collective pedagogical teacher culture 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Teacher’s perception that staff have school spirit Teacher’s perception that administrators communicate a mission Teacher’s perception that teachers agree on school mission Teacher feels accepted and respected as a colleague Teacher feels that staff are continually learning and seeking new ideas.

‘‘STRONGLY DISAGREE’’ ‘‘DISAGREE’’ ‘‘NEITHER AGREE NOR DISAGREE’’ ‘‘AGREE’’ ‘‘STRONGLY AGREE’’

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Responses to the above three questions are captured through a five-point response scale: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

‘‘STRONGLY DISAGREE’’ ‘‘DISAGREE’’ ‘‘NEITHER AGREE NOR DISAGREE’’ ‘‘AGREE’’ ‘‘STRONGLY AGREE’’ Frequency that teachers meet to collaborate on lesson planning Frequency that teachers meet to collaborate on curriculum development Frequency that teachers meet to discuss a child

Responses to the above three questions are captured through a five-point response scale: 1 2 3 4 5

‘‘NEVER’’ ‘‘ONCE A MONTH OR LESS’’ ‘‘TWO OR THREE TIMES A MONTH’’ ‘‘ONCE OR TWICE A WEEK’’ ‘‘THREE OR MORE TIMES A WEEK’’

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