The Role of Autonomy in Job Satisfaction

Although this Washington Post article opens as being about the differences a Finnish schoolteacher experiences when practicing her profession in the United States:

Chartouni, who is a Canadian citizen through marriage, moved from Finland to Florida with her family in 2014, due in part to her husband’s employment situation. After struggling to maintain an income and ultimately dropping out of an ESL teacher-training program, a school in Tennessee contacted her this past spring about a job opening. Shortly thereafter, Chartouni had the equivalent of a full-time teaching load as a foreign-language teacher at two public high schools in the Volunteer State, and her Finnish-Canadian family moved again. (Chartouni holds a master’s degree in foreign-language teaching from Finland’s University of Jyväskylä.)

it quickly turns to an issue that’s much broader than the differences between Finland and the United States and of much more general interest—the role of autonomy in job satisfaction:

According to a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) report, teacher autonomy is positively associated with teachers’ job satisfaction and retention. And while most U.S. public-school teachers report a moderate amount of control in the classroom, many say they have little autonomy. In fact, the percentage of U.S. public-school teachers who perceive low autonomy in the classroom grew from 18 percent in the 2003-04 school year to 26 percent in the 2011-12 school year. In general, U.S. public-school teachers report that they have the least amount of control over two particular areas of teaching: “selecting textbooks and other classroom materials” and “selecting content, topics, and skills to be taught.”

My mom, who spent much of her career that spanned the years from the 1940s to the 1980s as a classroom teacher, used to call the classroom “the last kingdom”. No more. Standardization and oversight are increasing rather than decreasing and as they increase teachers’ job satisfaction declines.

That’s no limited to teaching. It extends to the other professions as well. Physicians, for example, report that they have experienced declines in their own autonomy and job satisfaction.

That should come as no surprise. As more money comes from far away the pressures to ensure that the money is being spent appropriately mount. The farther away the source of the money and mandates, the greater the indifference to the job satisfaction of individual professionals.