The global challenge of teacher recruitment, retention, and turnover is growing, requiring quick attention (UNESCO, 2024). This issue is driven by several interrelated factors, including high early-career attrition rates, an ageing workforce, and declining enrolment in teacher education (Gorard et al., 2024; Wieser, 2024). Teacher job satisfaction (TJS) is considered one of the most significant predictors of these events (Fütterer et al., 2023; Toropova et al., 2021). TJS refers to the perceived alignment between what teachers expect from their jobs and what their jobs actually provide (Locke, 1969). TJS plays a crucial role in delivering high-quality instruction (Iwu et al., 2018) and thus influencing students' learning outcomes. We aim to explore whether TJS has declined in recent years internationally. Data from three cycles of TALIS are used, from only 12 countries that participated in all cycles (Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Korea Republic, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Slovak Republic, and Spain). In each of the cycles, between 40,000 and 47,000 teachers participated in the survey. The analyses are conducted using the R package EdSurvey (Bailey et al., 2021). We used teacher reports on a single item “All in all I am satisfied with my job” to measure TJS. This was the only unchanged item across TALIS cycles. Out initial results show considerable between-country differences in the trends of mean TJS. For instance, countries like Norway have experienced a decline in TJS, while others, such as Italy and Spain, report increased TJS over time. In contrast, the differences across time points in TJS are not statistically significant in Slovakia and Bulgaria. To investigate an international trend over time, we ran a country-fixed effects regression model across the 36 country-by-year observations. We regressed TJS on the year (2008, 2013, or 2018) as well as a country variable. We found that across these 12 countries, mean TJS increased between 2008 and 2013 significantly (b = 0.078, SE = 0.030, p < .05) and then remained at that level between 2013 and 2018 (difference between 2008 and 2018: b = 0.076, SE = 0.030, p < .05). The finding suggests that TJS does not seem to decline internationally over time. If anything, teachers became more satisfied with their job in many countries between 2008 and 2013. Since Norway showed a significant decline in TJS, it would be interesting to follow this finding up with in-depth analyses.

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