oa Docenten onder druk? De invloed van schoolgrootte op de arbeidssatisfactie van docenten in het voortgezet onderwijs

Teachers under Pressure? The influence of school size upon teacher job satisfaction in Dutch secondary education

In the last decades, a visible and significant upscaling of educational organisations can be witnessed in nearly all Dutch educational sectors. The rise of large-scaled public service organisations is related with increased interest in the quality and 'humanity' of education. Many discussions about large scale education are connected with supposed problems concerning teacher work within schools. It is regularly taken for granted that scale expansion puts teaching staff under pressure, and it has become usual to blame school size for several problems (demotivated professionals, failing quality of education). However, these assumptions are highly controversial. The research of presented in this article intends to answer the question what influence school size has upon teacher job satisfaction in Dutch secondary education. Based on a secondary data-analysis and case study research, we demonstrate that the scale of educational organisations does not necessarily say a lot. In contrast with prevailing views about school size, working in large secondary schools does not by definition harm teacher job satisfaction. On the basis of these findings, we propose a more fine-tuned approach, which attends the organisational context of teachers' work and other factors which affect teacher job satisfaction.