Societies around the world are becoming increasingly diverse with rising migration and socioeconomic disparities. Schools are expected to deal with different languages, culture backgrounds, and gender issues, promote tolerance and social cohesion, and effectively support disadvantaged students and students with learning or behavioural challenges. Teachers need to be capable of preparing students for a society and an economy in which they will be expected to be self-directed learners, able and motivated to keep learning over a lifetime. However, global concerns persist, including attracting high-achievers into teacher education and teacher profession, retaining good quality teachers, especially in high-demand subjects and areas (Glassow et al., 2023), ensuring gender balance in composition of teachers, addressing undervalued teacher work and the professional status, and managing declining teacher salary level (e.g., McJames et al., 2023; OECD, 2020). Research on teachers’ job satisfaction primarily focuses on its structure and influencing factors, such as teacher professional motivation, a sense of achievement, promotion opportunities, the challenging nature of work, significant responsibilities, and appreciation. Empirical evidence showed that low job satisfaction contributed to teacher burnout, attrition and turnover (Madigan & Kim, 2021). Conversely, teachers with high job satisfaction are more motivated, enthusiastic, and committed to their school’s mission (Shoshani & Eldor, 2016). Understanding factors that enhance teacher job satisfaction is crucial for retaining qualified teachers and attracting new candidates to teaching profession, which, in tune, can improve teaching quality and students’ learning outcomes. The current study use data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 (OECD, 2019) to investigate the relationship between teachers’ motivational factors and teacher job satisfaction in lower secondary education across 48 countries and economies. The analysis includes 153 866 teachers 9 247 school principals. The study also explores the influence of sociodemographic factors, including gender, age, education, and work experience, on job satisfaction. Structural equation modelling is used to investigate the relationships among latent constructs related to teachers’ motivation, perceptions of teaching practices and profession, as well as their job satisfaction. The first step models these relationships, while the second step examines how system-level factors, such as autonomy and professional status indices, can explain cross-country variations in the direct and indirect effects of these factors on teacher satisfaction. The findings provide insights on the pathway into teachers’ job satisfaction and offer evidence-based recommendations for policy interventions aimed at enhancing teacher well-being and educational outcomes

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