Proceedings of The 6th International Academic Conference on Education
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Characteristics of Professional Communication in Primary Schools from The Teachers’ Perspective: Case of Republic of Croatia
Dr. Nevenka Maras, Borna Nemet
ABSTRACT:
This paper investigates the importance of professional communication as a necessary prerequisite for the successful cooperation of teachers within a team, which is ultimately reflected in job satisfaction. For this purpose, specific objectives were defined: to examine the perception of class and subject school teachers about communication within a team, and differences in teachers’ perceptions of team communication with regards to age, the level of education, type of teaching and place of work, and to examine their perception in the correlation between team communication and job satisfaction. The research used a subscale of the standardized Examining school quality questionnaire (German: Skalen zur Schulqualität, Gerecht, Steinert, Klieme and Döbrich, 2007) and the Scale for the satisfaction of basic psychological needs at work (English: Work-related basic need satisfaction scale, Van den Broeck, Vansteenkiste, De Witte, Soenens and Lens, 2010). The research was conducted on a sample (N=495) of classroom (N=187) and subject (N=308) teachers. Exploratory factor analysis with a reliability coefficient of 0.90 showed three factors: 1) autonomy, 2) competence and 3) relationship that explain 57.16% of the total variance. Results showed that teacher’s age (F(3,491) = 5,01, p < 0.01)), years of service (F(3,491) = 4,45, p < 0.01)), and place of work (F (2, 491) = 3,73; p < 0.05)) were found to be significant contributors to professional communication. Teachers who perceive a greater presence of positive characteristics of professional communication in their team have a statistically significantly higher assessment of their work satisfaction.
keywords: Communication Culture, Professional Communication, Teacher Competence, Team Cooperation, Work Satisfaction