A multidimensional, person-centred perspective on teacher engagement: Evidence from Canadian and Australian teachers

Abstract

Background: Hitherto, little work has examined the proposition that teachers may simultaneously invest varying degrees of their energetic resources in the teaching and learning environment.

Aims: Drawing on a multidimensional, person-centred perspective, the study aimed to identify profiles of teacher engagement, reflecting distinct configurations of teachers' energetic investments, and their generalizability across Canadian and Australian teachers. Additionally, we examined teachers' self-efficacy beliefs as predictors of engagement profile membership and the cross-country generalizability of these relations. We also examined emotional exhaustion (EE) and job satisfaction (JS) as outcomes of profile membership in Canadian and Australian teachers, respectively.

Samples: The samples comprised 586 Canadian and 595 Australian teachers.

Methods: Data on teachers' multidimensional engagement and teacher self-efficacy were collected in both the Canadian and Australian samples. Additionally, data on Canadian teachers' burnout and Australian teachers' job satisfaction were collected.

Results: Latent profile analyses revealed three engagement profiles, representing distinct configurations of teachers' multidimensional energetic investments, which were found to mostly generalize. Additionally, self-efficacy beliefs were found to predict the likelihood of engagement profile membership equally in Canadian and Australian teachers, and EE in Canadian teachers and JS in Australian teachers were found to differ significantly across the profiles.

Conclusions: The results of the study constitute among the first evidence that teachers may be differentially engaged in the teaching environment with respect to their distinct energetic investments, and such differential profiles of engagement have differential implications for well-being-related outcomes and can be predicted by their teaching capability beliefs.

Keywords: emotional exhaustion; job satisfaction; latent profile analysis; teacher engagement; teacher engagement profiles; teacher self-efficacy.