Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p1832"

Previous studies have shown that teachers' job satisfaction has decreased in recent years and that teachers at the beginning of their careers are at great risk of leaving the profession at an early stage. Satisfaction with work and career has shown several positive consequences, including well-being, willingness to stay in the profession and work engagement. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine how satisfied Finnish newly qualified class teachers are with their careers, and to identify their career success criteria. The purpose is also to investigate whether the class teachers feel that their degree has been adequate and if it has prepared them for working life, and to investigate what a class teacher earns. The relationships between career satisfaction, teacher education adequacy and salary are examined. The research problems are examined regarding gender, additional education, and employment relation. The study involved 137 alumni from the University of Helsinki's class teacher education who gradu-ated between 2012 and 2015. The informants responded electronically to Aarresaari's national career follow-up questionnaire. The research design for the study was triangulation with the aim of analyzing quantitative and qualitative data parallelly. The material was analyzed quantitatively with the statisti-cal program SPSS, while open answers were analyzed with thematic content analysis. The class teachers were fairly satisfied with their careers, they deemed that the teacher education was adequate and that it provided them with the necessary skills. Important career success criteria were type of employment relation, career advancement, professional agent, nature of work, school, and social relations. Although the quantitative results showed that the class teachers considered the education to be adequate, the thematic content analysis revealed that there were several shortcom-ings including student relations, cooperation, and teacher role. The correlation test showed that ca-reer satisfaction had weak but positive correlations with salary and adequacy of the education. Class teachers earn on average 3002 euros a month, and men earn more than women. Newly qualified class teachers' career success criteria should be important assets for promoting career satisfaction and retaining class teachers in the profession. Class teacher education needs to be sensitive to changes in society, while newly qualified class teachers should be offered appropriate support in adapting to the practical work.