TEACHER'S WELL-BEING AND EFFECTIVENESS: THE ROLE OF THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN JOB DEMANDS AND JOB RESOURCES

Teaching has been recognized as a highly demanding profession, usually characterized by an excessive workload, lack of suitable resources, constant changes within the profession, an inadequate salary and difficult interactions with students (Santavirta, Solovieva, & Theorell, 2007). Recently, scholars have started to investigate how the combination of stressful and motivating job characteristics influences negative (e.g., burnout) and positive (e.g., work engagement) aspects of well-being (Bakker & Derks, 2010). Particularly, it has been hypothesized (Hobfoll, 2002) that resource gain acquires its saliency in the context of resource loss. This suggests that job resources become more salient and gain their motivational potential when employees are confronted with high job demands (e.g., workload, responsibilities, changes within the profession) because they can help goal accomplishment. Purpose of Study: The aim of the present study was to investigate the interplay between job demands (e.g., interaction with students, changes within the profession) and job resources (e.g., opportunity for professional development), by using the general framework of the Job demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Research Methods: Participants in the present study were part of a larger study examining organizational well-being. A well-validate questionnaire was filled out by 439 Italian teachers (56% women), working in secondary schools (average age was 43.4, SD=9.6). Findings: Our findings are consistent with, and expand, earlier research on the interplay hypothesis in the JD-R model, which showed that several job resources (e.g. opportunity for professional development) can buffer the impact of job demands on different outcomes of employees’ well-being (e.g. engagement) and organizational effectiveness (e.g. identification). These findings suggest that teachers facing demanding working conditions can be helped by offering them the right resources. Particularly, it seems important to offer them training opportunities. Conclusions: Taken together these findings shed some light in the understanding of the mechanisms that are involved in fostering well-being among Italian schoolteachers: school organizations should consider essential dimensions of job resources, in order to increase work engagement and thus to contribute to better teachers’ well-being and effectiveness. Keywords: Interplay, Job Resources, Schoolteachers, Work Engagement