Teacher’s work engagement

236 colleagues where they a facilitated in sharing ideas and strategies. The findings support the need to build learning communities among the teachers so they can share the benefits from the training programs.

7.2.3 Teacher’s work engagement

An important theoretical model, the JD-R A. B. Bakker Bal, 2006; Arnold B. Bakker Demerouti, 2007; A. B. Bakker et al., 2007, has identified two constructs that may contribute to the level of teacher work engagement: job demands and job resources. The demanding aspects of a job, for example work load, if it leads to constant overtaxing, may in the end lead to exhaustion that impairs performance and provides negative consequences for organizations. Job resources like salary, work opportunity, interpersonal and social relations, collegial support, role clarity, and access to decision making, on the other hand, lead to engagement and positive outcomes Schaufeli Bakker, 2004. Following the general trend in the findings from the work engagement research, the findings of the present study are of importance. In a profession where job demands are very high, there is a lack of job resources, a moderate work engagement among teacher participants might be expected. The findings suggest that the overall teachers‘ work engagement was 5.04 with the standard deviation of 1.13. Interestingly, the participants rated themselves highest in their dedication to teaching profession, regardless of the low financial return and academic recognition they receive. This is theoretically different from major finding from research involving dedication in a profession, for example Bakker 237 et al.‘s 2004 which suggests that it is job resources that lead to dedication. It is therefore surprising that the findings of the present study indicate that work engagement is still high regardless of minimal job resources available the participants. In addition, it is also revealed that work engagement among participants is not related to the demographic factors, like gender, age, teacher status, teaching experience, type of school and the district where the teachers taught. The present study has proposed that the level of work engagement among the participants resulted from the social and religious values of the teaching profession in the region. In addition it was also affected by the perceived teachers‘ social role model function of teachers, ensuring that they see it inappropriate to be less engaged in this profession. Furthermore, this study has shown that there is a positive significant relationship between teacher work engagement and the level of teachers‘ efficacy beliefs of the participants. An increase in teacher work engagement was related to the increase i n the teachers‘ efficacy beliefs.

7.3 Contributions of the present research