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Abstract
Teacher attrition is a threat to public education in the United States. Many of today’s teachers are dissatisfied with their jobs due to administrators’ leadership styles. Estimates suggest that only 25% of teachers retire while the rest teachers resign due to job dissatisfaction. This study investigated the relationship between the perceived leadership style of the educational leaders, teacher years of experience, and teacher job satisfaction. The theoretical foundations were transactional and transformational leadership styles. Using quantitative approach and correlation design, the researcher explored the relationship between perceived leadership styles, teachers’ years of experience, and teacher job satisfaction in two middle schools in South Texas. The 67 eligible teachers completed the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5x (MLQ 5x), and the demographic questionnaire via SurveyMonkey®. Data from the survey were loaded in SPSS and analyzed using Pearson’s correlation. The results indicated that participants had moderately high job satisfaction ( M = 3.79, SD = 0.72). Participants also had utilized the three leadership styles moderately often: transformational leadership style (M = 2.02, SD = 0.45), transactional leadership style (M = 2.15, SD = 0.52), and passive behaviors (M = 2.32, SD = 0.78): a stronger correlation between the transformational leadership style and teacher job satisfaction. There was no statistically significantly positive relationship between job satisfaction and teachers’ years of experience. School leadership training programs may reduce teacher attrition in schools by adopting the findings of this study. Keywords: Teacher, leadership, job satisfaction, transformational, experience
