Abstract:

It is recognised nationally and within the broader European context, that teaching cannot be understood only within having the right teaching techniques, being competent and possessing an appropriate body of subject matter and establishing interpersonal relations with parents and children but, also It can be argued that the first year teachers are at the most difficulty, as the social aspects of learning to work within the classroom context coincide with the ongoing process of new teachers mastering their instructional skills and their workplace learning. This paper considers the satisfaction from the perspective of first year primary school teachers in Ireland. To consider the issue of job satisfaction, his paper reports on the systematic enquiry of empirical and analytical nature and focuses on daily classroom experiences of newly qualified teachers that made them feel more confident and less confident about their teaching and about themselves as teachers during the first year of teaching.

This paper discussed the findings of a large mixed-methods study conducted on a variety of early professional experiences of beginning primary teachers in the Republic of Ireland. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used within the single-case study. The data was collected by means of a postal questionnaire administered to a sample of 1635 graduates of Trinity College Dublin from teacher preparation programmes and 52 in-depth qualitative interviews with first year teachers. This paper will make a critical contribution to understanding the issue of job satisfaction for first year teachers. In particular, I will focus on two themes. Firstly, I will explore the link between teachers’ perceptions of preparedness to teach in the first year and their satisfaction with their career choice. In particular, the paper reports on the themes: perceptions of preparedness, relevance of course content, importance of course elements and, attitudes to pre-service education as a reason for experienced difficulties in the classroom. Secondly, the discussion will particularly explore the link between the perceptions of ‘teaching identity’ and suitability for teaching and their perceived job satisfaction. The findings reveal a positive picture of motives and intrinsic job satisfaction. The results also suggested that teachers who reflected positively on their preparation in college have had a broader understandings of their role stated that if they had a choice to enter teaching again, they would have done so. The paper will conclude with the study implications for teacher professional development and pre-service education.

Keywords:

Job satisfaction, classroom teaching experiences, primary teachers, initial teacher education, mixed methods research.