Examination of the Job Satisfaction of Teachers Working With Individuals in Need of Special Education With Regard to Certain Variables

In this study, the job satisfaction levels of teachers working with individuals in need of special education were examined with regard to certain variables. General survey model was used in the study and the study group of this research was comprised of teachers from all over Turkey who work at special education schools, integration and special education classrooms. The job satisfaction scale developed by Şahin (1999) was used in the study. The scale was developed using Google and administered online on December 08, 2017 and December 30, 2017. A total of 465 teachers participated in the study. SPSS 22 software was used for data analysis. Besides, descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA test were used for data analysis. As for the results of the study, while no statistically significant difference was found in terms of gender, number of working years, considered income level, and age, statistically significant differences were observed according to salary, receiving support from colleagues, receiving praise from administrators, finding working at special education schools convenient variables.

Teachers' high job satisfaction is a factor, which promotes the quality of education (Şahin, 2013).One of the most important issues dealt with in today's schools is how to increase the quality of education.Therefore, teachers' job satisfaction should be increased (Ghavifekr & Pillai, 2016).As their job satisfaction increases, they feel happier and reflect it to their students positively.Thus, the more the quality of education increases, the more successful students will be (Şahin, 2013).Job satisfaction may also contribute to improve teachers' skills and abilities.To ensure this, they should work in a positive atmosphere (Ghavifekr & Pillai, 2016).In other words, working in a pleasant environment has a positive effect on job satisfaction (Tran & Le, 2015).In the light of literary review, it is possible to conclude that teachers' happiness at work affects their job satisfaction positively (Akhtara, Hashmib, & Naqvic, 2010).
Controlling individuals who have inabilities may be difficult and teachers may face some problems while educating them.This is the reason why some of them are unhappy with working at such schools (Başaran, 2001).Teachers who work with people with inabilities are usually stressful and present burnout syndrome more than their colleagues working with healthy children (Girgin & Baysal, 2005a).While the literature was reviewed, few studies, either domestic or foreign, that focus on the job satisfaction of teachers of special education were found.The study carried out by Akkaş (2017) is an example of the studies regarding the job satisfaction levels of teachers teaching in special education classes in Turkey.In another study carried out in Turkey, Mistan (2017) has studied teachers' job satisfaction and their burnout syndrome; Yaman (2015), on the other hand, examined the job satisfaction of administrative staff working at vocational training centres.In another research which was based on Turkish context, Güneş (2016) studied job satisfaction levels and burnout syndrome of trainers working with disabled athletes and in a similar study, Yiğit (2007) sought to address job satisfaction level, burnout syndrome and mental health conditions of teachers working at special education schools.As for the studies carried out abroad, several studies on teachers working at special education schools were found (Cummings, 1994;Mastrantuono, 2015;Ketheeswarani, 2018;Shourbagi & Bakkar, 2015;Stempien & Loeb, 2002;Strydom, Nortjé , Beukes, Esterhuyse & van der Westhuizen, 2012;Wangari and Orodho, 2014).To find out more about the issue, this study aims to find out the answers to the following questions; 1. What are the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools? 2. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools present any differences with regard to the gender variable?
3. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools show any differences considering the salary variable?
4. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools point out any differences regarding the variable of the support they get from their colleagues?
5. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools have any differences in terms of the appraisal they get from their administrators?
6. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools display any differences according to the variable of considering working at special education schools convenient?
7. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools present any differences with regards to years of experience variable?
8. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools point out any differences regarding their income levels variable?
9. Do the job satisfaction levels of teachers working at special education schools have any differences concerning their age variable?

Method
Research model, working groups, data collection tool and data analysis will be given in this section.

Research Model
In the present paper, descriptive survey model is used.Descriptive models are the ones where research is carried out on a sample or samples taken out from large numbers of elements from the whole population (Karasar, 1994).

Working Group
This research was carried out on a total of 465 teachers working at special education schools across Turkey and volunteer teachers who accepted to take part in the study during 2017-2018 education year.Demographic data was given in Table 1.

Data Collection Tool
In this study, a job satisfaction scale proposed by Şahin (1999) was used as the data collection tool.The scale consists of 42 questions and 6 sub dimensions such as the Job, Administration, Salary, Success-Appreciation-Recognition, Relations among Individuals, Parent Student Apathy.Just as the Cronbach Alpha value of the scale, the value of the present study is also .91.The scale was organised as a rating scale with triple ranking, where each -yes‖ is 3 points; each -maybe‖ is 2 points; each -no‖ is 1 point.Negative questions have the opposite scaling.Since the scale consists of two intervals and three choices, the scale was divided by interval number to find the arithmetic mean and the result was calculated as .<066.One point was added to it, and a value between 1 -1.66 was obtained which represents -not satisfied‖ and 2.34 -3.00 to represent -satisfied‖.To collect the demographic data, an information sheet was prepared by the researcher.This form includes information regarding gender, age, years of work experience, major (field of work), desired amount of income, place of work, -Is your salary enough?‖, -Do you get support from your colleagues?‖, -Do you get appraisal from your administrators?‖,-Do you think it is convenient to work at special education schools?‖.

Collection and Evaluation of Data
In order to collect data for the present study a Google scale was formed.This form was kept active for the use of participants between 08 and 30 December 2017.The researcher asked the participants working at special education schools to volunteer in the study sending them the link of the scale formed on Google to their e-mails and Facebook messenger accounts.Besides, the researcher sent the link to the participants also working at special education schools via Whatsapp when he could not reach their mail and messenger accounts.For the analysis of the data SPSS 22 (The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) programme was used.In addition, to checking the normal distribution Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests were utilized.However, both Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests showed that there is no normal distribution.Therefore, to test the normal distribution of the data, kurtosis and skewness values were evaluated and as a result of this evaluation, they were detected to be within the limit, which is ±1.96.According to Tabachnick & Fidell (2007) a value of ±1.96 shows that the data is distributed normally.After finding out that the data was normally distributed, parametric tests were employed in this study.For the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA test were used.As the post ANOVA test, LSD tests were implemented.During the analysis of data, the statistical meaningfulness was taken as .05.

Findings
In this section, charts and interpretations of descriptive statistical data and findings were presented.Findings were ordered in accordance with sub problem ordering.Job satisfaction among teachers depending on gender variable shows significant results (t=,618; p>0,05) (Table 3).

P*<0,05
There is a significant difference in teachers' job satisfaction with regard to their getting appraisal from their administrators (t=,000;p<0,05) (Table 6).When the sub dimensions were analyzed, the job (t=,000;p<0,05), administration (t=,000;p<0,05), salary (t= ,004;p<0,05), relations among individuals (t=,000;p<0,05) success appreciation recognition (t=,000;p<0,05) and parent student apathy (t=,007;p<0.05)have statistically significant differences.As seen in Table 7, there is a significant difference in teachers' job satisfaction regarding their opinion about working at special education schools (t=,000;p<0,05 When the LSD Test results were taken into consideration, it can be seen that there is a difference in sub dimensions of 11-20 years, 1-10 years and 21 years and up (Table 9).A significant relation between the teachers with 1-10 years of experience and those with an experience of 21 years and up was not observed.In the sub dimension of the job, when 1-10 years was compared with 21 years and up variable, there is a significant difference among teachers with 1-10 years of experience.There is also a significant difference among ones with 21 years and up, compared with the ones with 11-20 years of experience.As for the data presented in Table 10, a significant difference was found in teachers' job satisfaction based on their opinion about where they see themselves in terms of their incomes (f=,761;p>0.05).When the sub dimensions of the job satisfaction scale were investigated, no significant differences were found regarding the job (f=,221;p>0.05),administration (f=,121;p>0.05),relations among individuals (f=,908;p>0.05),success appreciation recognition (f=,782;p>0.05)and parent student apathy (f=,207;p>0.05)variables.However, as of the salary variable, there is a significant difference (f=,000;p<0.05).The results of the LSD test were given in Table 11.The results of the job satisfaction LSD test based on the teachers' salary levels were indicated in Table 11.There is a where women's job satisfaction levels were detected to be higher.For example, Akkaş (2017) and Yiğit (2007) found that job satisfaction levels of women are higher on the basis of gender differences.Moreover, Bogler (2002), Clark (1997), Kumaş & Deniz (2010) and Şahin (1999) also suggested that women's job satisfaction levels were higher.The relatively higher levels of job satisfaction of success, appreciation and recognition among women may be attributed to the idea that teaching is widely considered as a suitable job for women (Kumaş & Deniz, 2010).
According to the general findings of the job satisfaction scale, the level of job satisfaction was found to be higher among teachers who receive higher salaries in this study.Similarly, Ketheeswarani (2018) and Shourbagi (2015) revealed some significant relations between job satisfaction and salary variable.According to a research carried out by Filiz (2014) similar results were also obtained; teachers who get higher salaries tend to have a higher level of job satisfaction.65 (14%) of the teachers taking part in the study stated that they were satisfied with salaries they get; 383 (85,5%) of teachers stated that they were not satisfied.The numbers mentioned above show that most of the teachers are not satisfied with their salaries.Likewise, several studies have claim that salary is an important variable in job satisfaction (Erol, 1989;Kağan, 2010;Kavutçu, 2016;Newstrom & Davis, 1997;Yüksel, 2004).In this regard, there are also some studies reporting that teachers want to quit their jobs or would not want to start work at schools where they would get low salaries (Baugh and Stone, 1982).Some teachers with low salaries were reported to feel obliged to find extra jobs to earn their living (Stinebrickner, 1998).Similarly, according to the results based the job satisfaction scale, the job and salary variables shown that the teachers who are satisfied with their salaries have high job satisfaction.However, a significant difference could not be detected in among relations among individuals, administration, success, appreciation and recognition and parent student apathy variables.
When -getting support from colleagues‖ variable was examined, it is seen that job satisfaction is higher except sub dimensions of parent student apathy.Getting support from colleagues is one of the leading factors which increase job satisfaction (Goddard, Goddard, Miller, Larsen & Jacob, 2010;Hellrıegel, Slocum & Woodman, 1995;Kavutç u, 2016;Rhodes, Hollinshead & Nevill, 2007).Those who get support from colleagues tend to have higher job satisfaction.Unrest among colleagues is undesirable and dangerous (Sharma & Jyoti, 2009).According to Little (1996) and Nias (1996) job satisfaction level of those who fall short in getting support from colleagues tends to decrease.Especially when the unrest takes place in education sector there is even bigger danger for the school (Sharma, 2009).
Considering the data about administration variable, nearly all aspects showed a significant difference in results.There are several other studies that indicate the positive effect of administration on job satisfaction.Shourbagi & Bakkar (2015) and Wangari & Orodho (2014) found out that teachers who got support from administrators tend to have a higher job satisfaction level.According to Robbins (1996), when individuals are praised for the job they do their level of job satisfaction increases.Especially, in cases where administrators appreciate and help their personnel, a positive effect on performance can be found (Eren, 2000;Goddard, et al., 2010;Hellriegel, Slocum and Woodman, 1995;OECD (2014).Additionally, Van Maele & Van Houtte (2012) assumed that administrators' support would affect job satisfaction positively.Little (1996) and Nias (1996) found that job satisfaction is negatively affected where there is no support or appraisal towards personnel.
Results of the variable -Do you think it is convenient to work at special education schools?‖ presented significant differences in all sub dimensions.Shourbagi & Bakkar (2015) revealed that there is a significant relation between qualities of the job and teachers' job satisfaction.This means that the qualities of the job affect the job satisfaction (Kağan, 2005;Taşdan & Tiryaki, 2008).From this viewpoint, it is easy to assume that being a teacher at a special education school is a tough job.That is why one should be patient and devoted to do this job (Girgin & Baysal, 2005).Besides, according to Eskicumalı (2002), teaching is a job which cannot be done without love.Teaching should start with loving the job and loving children.A loving teacher is better in communicating with children.Those who do not love children and teaching cannot make good teachers (Eskicumalı, 2002).Within this research, teacher who stated that they loved their job and children appear to have higher job satisfaction levels.This may be because teaching at special education schools is a job which requires patience and devotion and teachers in this field are the ones who love their jobs.
According to results, there is not a significant difference based on years of work.When the sub dimensions of administration, salary, relations among individuals, success, appreciation and recognition, parent and student apathy were taken into consideration, there is not a significant difference either.However, in the sub dimensions of the job, there is a significant difference.Comparing teachers who have 1-10 years of experience with those who have more than 21, those with 1-10 years of experience have a significant difference.Moreover, there is a significant difference between those with more than 21 years and those with 11-20 years.There are several studies like Wangari & Orodho (2014) which conclude with the same results where work experience affects job satisfaction.According to a study by Demir (2001) teachers with 1-5 years and 15 years and more work experience have significant differences in the sub dimension of relations and 1-5 and 11-15 years of work experience have significant differences on the basis of physical conditions.Mistan (2017) detected a significant relation in job satisfaction on the basis of work experience.In his study on teachers from Anatolian High Schools, Tan (2003) also found significant relations among teachers with 6-10, 11-15 and 16-20 years of experience.It has been observed that job satisfaction increases with work experience.Gündüz (2008) and Uras & Kunt (2006); on the other hand, assume that work experience does not affect job satisfaction.Similarly, Akkaş (2017) and Shourbagi & Bakkar (2015) have found that work experience does not have an effect on job satisfaction among special education school teachers.In the present research, on the basis of the job variable, it was detected that job satisfaction increases when the years in the job variable increases.This study also revealed that teachers who have 1-10 years of experience have a higher job satisfaction because they are more positive and enthusiastic in their first years of work.For the teachers with 21 years and more of work experience, the job satisfaction could be attributed to their experience and mastery in their work.
There is no significant difference between the levels of income they consider themselves at.When job satisfaction scale and its sub dimensions like the job itself, administration etc. were analysed, there is not a significant difference.When we compare sub dimension of our scale, we find a significant relation.Looking at the top and bottom income levels, there is a significant difference.When the bottom and top income levels were compared, a significant difference was seen regarding top income levels.When the bottom and middle levels were compared, there is also a significant difference on the basis of middle level.When the literature was taken into consideration, it can be seen that the income is an important variable for job satisfaction.In this regard, Yiğit (2000) found that there is a significant relation between job satisfaction and income levels.Mistan (2017) also found significant relation between job satisfaction and income levels.Tellioğlu (2004) concluded that the lowest job satisfaction level was among those who had the lowest income.Similarly, Sarpkaya (2000) detected that teachers showed the least job satisfaction in income sub dimension.Income level and the money they receive affect teachers' job satisfaction (Saiti & Papadopoulos, 2015;Spector, 1997).AS the income increases, so does the job satisfaction (Abd-El-Fattah, 2010).In the society, the income is not only the means of meeting the needs but also the indicator of respect and honour (Sabuncuoğlu & Tüz, 1998).
According to the findings of this study, significant relation between age and job satisfaction could not be detected.Abushaira (2012) and Shourbagi & Bakkar (2015) did not find a significant difference on the basis of age variable, either.Yiğit (2007), in his study on special education teachers, found a minor significance of age variable in the job satisfaction.Şahin (2013) did not find a significant difference between job satisfaction and age, but Günbayı & Tokel (2012) could detect a minor negative significance.Kavutç u (2016) identified that the highest job satisfaction was between the ages of 31-40, which was followed by above 51 years.The least job satisfaction level was detected to be between 41-50 years.Özsuer (2016) found that the highest satisfaction level on the basis of age was among the teachers between 41 and 45.The lowest job satisfaction, according to that study, was found among the teachers between 51 and 55.Demir (2001) found that interaction, respect, holiness and morality sub dimensions represent significant differences among 21-30 and 41 and above age groups.The highest job satisfaction level was among teachers who were 41 years or older.There are various results within the literature of similar studies.According to Balcı (1985) there is not a consistent relation between age and job satisfaction.However, working years may affect job satisfaction.Bogler (2002) stated that age variable is an important variable in job satisfaction.As there is not a significant relation between age and job satisfaction, it may be concluded that elderly teachers and younger ones work in harmony in their workplaces and share their experiences.
According to our findings teachers who work with handicapped students have an average job satisfaction.Gender variable, working years variable, age variable, income level variable do not have statistically significant relations.
According to salary variable, support from colleagues, appreciation from administrators, opinion of working at a special education school can be considered to have significant relations with job satisfaction.
Further research can be carried out to find the correlation and regression of the job satisfaction among different variables.

Table 1 .
Demographic data of the teachers

Table 2 .
Descriptive statistical data related to burnout level of teachers

Table 3 .
Results of unpaired t-test based on gender variable

Table 4 .
Salary variable unpaired t-test results

Table 5 .
Do you get support from your colleagues?variable unpaired t-test results

Table 6 .
Do you get support from administrators?Variable unpaired t-test results

Table 7 .
-Do you think it is convenient to work at special education schools?‖ variable unpaired t-test results Do you think it is convenient to work at special education schools?N

Table 9 .
LSD test regarding the sub dimension of the years of work variable

Table 10 .
ANOVA test results according to of the considered income level variance?

Table 11 .
The results of the sub dimensions of the LSD test concerning the question -Where do you see yourself in terms of your income?‖