Whether or not teacher training equips teachers with the professional knowledge and competence they need to deliver high-quality teaching has been an important area of debate in recent decades (Darling-Hammond, 2016). Research has shown that teachers develop their knowledge, competence, and skills through teacher education and subject-specific specializations during teacher training (Coenen et al., 2018; Hill et al., 2019) as well as through years of teaching experience (Coenen et al., 2018) and professional development (Hill et al., 2019). There is evidence too that teachers play a key role in influencing student learning and achievement (e.g., Coenen et al.). However, despite the best of formal qualifications the conditions for the working environment and teachers’ job satisfaction can affect how teachers exercise their competence in classrooms (Collie et al., 2012). Indeed, teachers’ professional competence is recognized as a multi-dimensional construct consisting of a broad range of cognitive and affective aspects of teacher characteristics that interact with teacher work (Blömeke, 2017). For this reason, the importance of the working environment and working conditions cannot be overlooked as it has been shown in previous research that teachers’ workload affects teacher job satisfaction (Toropova et al., 2021). Teachers’ job satisfaction, in turn, is suggested to influence teacher instruction and the learning support offered to students (Klusmann et al., 2008). In addition, teachers’ working environment, in terms of greater classroom autonomy and fewer disciplinary problems (Nguyen et al., 2020) as well as the attractiveness of the teaching profession are suggested to be factors influencing whether teachers remain in the profession or not (Viac & Fraser, 2020). Furthermore, research also shows that school socio-economic status (SES) is associated with teachers’ working conditions and well-being. Teachers working in schools with a lower socio-economic status report not only higher mental workload but also poorer well-being (Virtanen et al., 2007). Considering that working conditions and job satisfaction are associated with important teacher and student outcomes more studies that examine relationships within this area are needed.

Many European countries struggle with changes in recruitment to the teaching profession, declining status of the teaching profession, and increasing teacher turnover (eg., Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011). In Sweden, these issues are perhaps particularly pertinent  (Alatalo et al., 2021; Holmlund et al., 2020) since Sweden also faces increasing school segregation and increasing achievement gaps (Yang Hansen & Gustafsson, 2016). Against this background, the present study aims to investigate factors related to teachers’ workload and job satisfaction in Swedish compulsory schools. Our theoretical point of departure is based on Blömeke’s (2017) modelling of teachers’ professional competence. Teacher competence is modelled as a multi-dimensional construct where all teacher resources play together to deal with the demands and challenges of the classroom. We investigate the relationships between different teacher characteristics and working conditions and teachers’ sense of job satisfaction. We hypothesize that teachers with more experience and a subject-specific specialization in mathematics have higher job satisfaction. More time in the profession may have helped teachers to find coping strategies but not only that, more specialized teachers are likely to work with the subject and grade they are trained for. This in turn could reduce the workload and increase the sense of job satisfaction. Moreover, we hypothesize that schools’ socio-economic composition is associated with teachers’ sense of workload and job satisfaction. More specifically, our research questions are:

1.)   To what extent are teachers’ characteristics related to their working conditions and job satisfaction?

2.)   Do teachers’ sense of workload and job satisfaction vary depending on students’ socio-economic background?

The current study is based on data from Sweden’s participation in the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2019). TIMSS is organized by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and assesses fourth-grade and eighth-grade students’ mathematics and science achievement on a 4-year cycle. The data was retrieved from the official website of TIMSS (http://timssandpirls.bc.edu) and we took advantage of the data from the background questionnaires to the fourth-grade teachers. To answer our research questions, we selected information about teachers’ sense of current workload, and information about teachers’ sense of job satisfaction indicated by items concerning their sense of being a teacher. Further, we selected information of teachers’ teaching experience and subject orientation during teacher training. TIMSS provides a detailed specification of the differences in subject specializations, and we used this information to categorize a variable that indicated higher and lower degrees of specialization for teaching mathematics in grade four. From students, we retrieved information about their socio-economic background measured by the number of books at home. However, further elaboration on the socio-economic background will be carried out with variables from both student and caregivers’ questionnaire answers. TIMSS has a hierarchical design with students nested in classrooms/teachers and for this reason, the study relied on multilevel regression to account for potential cluster effects that are due to the nature of the data (e.g., Hox, 2002). Sampling weights were used to account for the stratification. Through means of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we modelled latent variables for teachers’ workload and job satisfaction. The latter was used as an outcome variable in a multilevel structural equation model to investigate the relationships to workload, teaching experience, and subject specialization/s. By means of student background information, we constructed a variable that aimed to capture school segregation and was used in the analysis to measure differences in teacher workload and job satisfaction between classrooms/schools. The next step is to include a similar analysis for grade 8 to compare how the results differ between grades. These analyses are to be carried out during spring. The main programs for data analysis were SPSS 29 and Mplus version 8 software.

The initial results demonstrate that teachers’ sense of less workload has a significant relationship to teachers’ sense of better job satisfaction in grade 4 (b= .33 (.10), p= .001). The workload indicators (e.g., too much material to cover, too many hours, too many administrative tasks, and the need for more time to prepare and more time to assist students), indicated large variability among teachers, and the results suggest that more experienced teachers experience a higher level of workload (b= -.27 (.08), p= .001). However, no significant relationship between experience and job satisfaction was found. Having a specialization aimed at mathematics and science teaching, in turn, has a significant positive relationship with teachers’ sense of less workload (b= .26 (.08), p= .01), but no significant relationship with job satisfaction. When adding school SES as a control variable into the model, the relationships between experience and specialization and workload change only slightly, suggesting that the socio-economic status of the school does not decrease/increase the relationships to any greater extent. The results indicate that the relationship between workload and job satisfaction is the same for teachers regardless of the school’s SES. In a next step, we aim to shed light on differences across grades by means of data from 8th grade. We expect to see some differences due to the different working conditions for teachers in grade 4 and 8 teachers. For example, in Sweden, teachers in grade 8 assign grades as opposed to teachers in grade 4 and this might be one factor that increases teacher workload. There are several limitations to this study. First, causal relationships examined in the study cannot be supported due to the cross-sectional study design. Another limitation is that the study is threatened by single-source bias by the self-reported questionnaire answers of teachers.

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