engleski

Why Having a Calling Makes Teachers Happy? Meaningful Life as a Mediator Between Work Orientations and Teachers’ Well/Ill-Being

Although there is evidence that teachers who approach their job as calling (as opposed to carrier or “just job”) have higher levels of well-being, research addressing the reasons for these relationships is still scarce. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between teachers’ work orientations (job, career and calling orientation) and well- and ill-being with possible mediating effects of meaning of life. The following measures were administered to 249 primary school teachers in Zagreb region: Work-life questionnaire (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997), Work Meaningfulness scale (Steger i sur., 2006), The Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS ; Watson et al., 1988), Emotional Exhaustion Scale (Maslach, Jackson i Schwab, 1996) with addition of one- item assessment of job satisfaction. The structural equations modeling was used to analyze data and indicated adequate fit by most indices. Calling orientation was positively related to well-being and negatively to ill- being. Job orientation was directly positively linked to ill-being. Career orientation was not linked to well- and ill-being in any way. In addition to that, mediation analysis performed with bootstrapping method, showed that meaning of life was significant mediator between calling orientation and well-and ill being.

meaningful life ; teacher ; well/ill-being ; work orientations

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