Profiles of teacher personality and relations with teacher self-efficacy, work engagement, and job satisfaction

- We identified four personality profiles among teachers based on Big-Five data.
- Profiles reflected “rigid”, “ordinary”, “well-adjusted”, and “excitable” teachers.
- Generally, well-adjusted teachers reported the highest teaching self-efficacy, work engagement, and job satisfaction.
- Excitable teachers reported the lowest job satisfaction.
- Ordinary and rigid teachers did not significantly differ on most outcomes.

This paper reports on research conducted to identify profiles of personality among teachers. We also examine the associations of profile membership with dimensions of teachers' self-efficacy for teaching, work engagement, and job satisfaction. Latent profile analyses revealed four distinct profiles of teacher personality (i.e., “rigid”, “ordinary”, “well-adjusted”, and “excitable”). Underpinning the validity of the profiles, results revealed that the dimensions of teacher self-efficacy, work engagement, and job satisfaction differed meaningfully across the profiles. Generally, well-adjusted teachers reported the highest levels on the outcomes. Notably, job satisfaction was lowest among excitable teachers. Equally noteworthy, ordinary and rigid teachers did not significantly differ on seven of the eight distal outcomes; only job satisfaction differed significantly between these profiles, with ordinary teachers reporting significantly lower satisfaction. The findings provide novel evidence suggesting that models of teacher attrition, effectiveness, or selection, should consider trait interactions rather than only additive effects of personality.