The effects of schools' social organization on teachers' feelings of workplace commitment: A comparison of teachers by race/ethnicity

The overall purpose of this study was two-fold. The first was to investigate the ways in which schools' organizational structures affect teachers' workplace commitment. The second was to investigate the appropriateness of combining teachers from various racial/ethnic groups in studies of factors which affect their satisfaction and/or workplace commitment.

The theoretical framework was primarily based on the work of Susan J. Rosenholtz (1989a). In addition to the scale for workplace commitment, she developed scales to measure faculty goal setting, shared goals, faculty cohesiveness, teacher collaboration, involvement in decision making, collective management of student behavior, teacher evaluation, parental involvement, learning opportunities, autonomy and discretion, and psychic rewards. Scales to measure equity and orientation to cultural diversity also were included.

The sample (n = 586) consisted of elementary teachers from four ethnic/racial groups: African American (82), Asian (55), Latino (124), and White/Non-Hispanic (325). The Latino sample was further divided for some analyses based on language of assignment. Data were collected by a survey. Interviews also were conducted with ten Latino teachers. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability coefficients, analysis of variance, and regression analysis.

Three major findings emerged. First, teachers' perceptions varied significantly by race/ethnicity on six of the organizational factors. Second, there were no significant differences among the groups on their average levels of workplace commitment. Third, across the groups of teachers, there were both common and different organizational factors that predicted of workplace commitment; differences in the patterns of organizational factors that underlay the predictors also were found.

In conclusion, for many teachers, race/ethnicity is a salient factor in how they perceive their workplaces. Beyond psychic rewards, organizational factors that nurture workplace commitment vary among the groups of teachers. Finally, the weight of the findings suggests that it is important to take teachers' race/ethnicity into account when designing and conducting research on their perceptions and feelings.