School of Education
FACULTY OF EDUCATION,SOCIAL SCIENCES AND LAW
Research Students’ Annual
Conference Posters
(RSAC) 2013
9 May, University House, University of Leeds
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Posters: Titles and Abstracts
Khalid Al Tayyar
The Department of Education
University of York
Job satisfaction and motivation amongst teachers in Saudi Arabia
Introduction
Several studies found that employees with high levels of job satisfaction were more likely to be
productive, healthy and stable in employment (e.g., Knights & Willmott, 2007; Ellickson, 2002; Fox,
Dwyer & Ganster, 1993). Most such studies were conducted in developed countries. There is a need
for similar research in developing countries (Zembylas & Papanastasiou, 2004). There appears to be
no published or grey literature on job satisfaction and motivation in private and public sector
teachers in Saudi Arabia.
Study aims and research questions
The main aim of the study was to explore male teachers’ job satisfaction and motivation in boys’
secondary schools in Saudi Arabia. The research questions are as follows:
1. What is the overall level of job satisfaction amongst secondary school teachers in Saudi
Arabia?
2. What are the main factors of job satisfaction for secondary school teachers in Saudi Arabia?
3. What factors contribute to job satisfaction and dissatisfaction among the participants?
4. What is their general level of overall motivation?
5. Is there a relationship between general job satisfaction and motivation?
6. Do job satisfaction and motivation vary in terms of demographic variables such as age,
qualifications, job grade, subject taught and training?
Situation in Saudi Arabia: will present on graph
Findings
Regarding general job satisfaction and motivation, the results reveal that teachers displayed high
levels of both, with overall mean scores of 3.58 and 3.75 respectively.
Finally, the study found statistically significant differences in job satisfaction and motivation
between teachers based on their qualifications, experience and subjects taught.
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References
Ellickson, M. C. (2002). Determinants of job satisfaction of municipal government employees. Public
Personnel Management; 31, 3; ABI/INFORM Global pg.343.
Fox, M. L., Dwyer, D. J., & Ganster, D. C. (1993). Effects of stressful job demands and control on
physiological and attitudinal outcomes in a hospital setting. Academy of Management Journal,
36, 289-318.
Knights, D., & Willmott, H. (2007). Introducing organisational behaviour and management. London,
Thomson Learning.
Zembylas, M., & Papanastasiou,E. (2004). Job satisfaction among school teachers in Cyprus. Journal
of Education Adminstration, 4(3), 357-374.
Ibrar Bhatt
School of Education
University of Leeds
Left to their own devices: the impact of cyberspace on classroom literacy
events
Recent research on the literacies of adult learners has revealed that they can engage in a wide
variety of sophisticated and complex literacy practices outside of their spheres of formal learning,
and which do not usually have a place in curricular activities. Additionally, over the last fifteen years,
the UK government has viewed information and communications technology (ICT) as a crucial
component of its drive to improve educational standards in the further education (FE) sector. After
colleges have invested so much into new ICT materials, it becomes important to address the effects
they have on classroom literacy events.
The new digital materials contribute to new sociomaterial arrangements in classrooms, exploration
and elucidation of which is key to understanding the digital literacy practices which instantiate them.
My research asks: what are these new sociomaterial arrangements? What types of literacy events
arise from them? And how do learners use them to influence and leverage educational, social, and
professional progress?
Methods adopted are: institutional observations, multimodal recordings of literacy events in
process, and interviews. Results at this stage of the study suggest that learners can readily tap in to
and mobilise out-of-college literacy practices to support classroom activities; making their own
unsolicited alterations of classroom literacy events through, among other things but most notably,
the often surreptitious use of cyberspace in the FE classroom.
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Melike Bulut
School of Education
University of Leeds
Pre-service language teacher learning during the practicum
This poster outlines the design of a proposed research study which sets out to investigate preservice language teacher learning during the practicum in a Bachelor’s degree English language
teacher education programme at a state university in Turkey. The poster addresses the rationale,
focus, methodology and the significance of the proposed research by raising what, why, how and so
what questions.
Arwa Gandeel
School of Education
University of Leeds
The story of a first-year English language teacher: her beliefs and practices in
teaching speaking
To understand what teachers do in their classrooms we need to gain insight into the beliefs that help
in shaping their work. Rana’s case study is one out of five case studies in my PhD Thesis. Rana is a
novice English language teacher who teaches English language to female students in a Saudi
University. She started working as a teacher after she gained her BA in English Language in 2011.
Rana started her job with neither any formal teacher education nor sufficient teacher training.
Rana’s case study includes five semi-structured interviews and three class observations. The first two
interviews were conducted to learn more about Rana’s background information and basic beliefs.
Then, after each of the three class observations, a post-observation interview was conducted to gain
deeper insights into her beliefs and to give her the opportunity to explain the rationale of her
classroom teaching practice. This poster presents a summary of the beliefs and the practices of
Rana’s beliefs and her speaking classroom teaching practices.
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Chung Gilliland
School of Education
University of Leeds
“You failed me”! Young learners in education system in Vietnam
Vietnam is committed to an Education for All policy and has made primary education completely
free since 1991, in order to bring all primary-school-aged children into school. After many years of
trying, however, the government is confronting challenges relating to ethnic minorities, including:
bringing children from ethnic minority groups to school; encouraging them not to drop out;
heightening their academic achievement.
My research aims to seek a better understanding of the learning situations of these children, to
better understand any difficulties that directly or indirectly affect their learning in mainstream
schools.
After spending approximately one year in the field to collect data at a primary school that enrols a
large number of ethnic minority children, I have come back from my research site with a rich source
of data and I would like to share something that appeared to be significant in my findings – the
pressures that young ethnic-minority learners are under in Vietnamese education system. Feedback
and similar experience shared by my listeners today would add great value to my research I believe.
Shanna Saubert
School of Education
University of Leeds
What am I doing here? Exploring international student engagement and
experiences
Millions of students study outside their home countries every year. As a top destination for
international students, the UK provides many opportunities to investigate the various factors which
may affect the experiences of international students. While league tables compare universities
based on various measures of student satisfaction, traditional surveys have not considered the
impact of opportunities for students to learn and develop as individuals outside lecture halls and
seminars. With multiple top-ranked programmes and a well-established students’ union, students
are actively encouraged to “Love your time at Leeds”. In fact, over 7000 international students from
145 different countries contributed to a vibrant community of more than 33,000 students at the
University of Leeds in 2011. Potential implications are widespread as students inevitably return
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home and tell others about their once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Previous research has shown those
students who participate regularly in on-campus activities with other students may express fewer
problems adjusting and higher levels of satisfaction. After all, an important dimension of
international education experiences is that students travel not just for academic qualifications but
also to gain personal knowledge and experience of other cultures. Using mixed methods, current
doctoral research explores the experiences of international students from the student perspective.
For the purposes of this research, student engagement encompasses such diverse aspects as
academic studies, social interactions, and other personal connections with both the university and
wider communities.
Leena Alfarani
School of Education
University of Leeds
Exploring the influences of the Faculty adoption of mobile technology at King
Abdulaziz Univerity, Saudi Arabia
The growth of the internet and mobile technologies has enabled institutions of higher
education to exploit mobile technology in order to take advantage of its wide potentials and
keep up with the era of mobile approaches. One of the immediate results of this growth in
mobile phone technology is that faculty members at universities are increasingly expected
to teach by using this technology in order to improve education and change the style of
traditional teaching, particularly, in developing countries. The main objective of this study is
to better understand the acceptance or rejection of faculty members of mobile learning
technology in Saudi higher education. This research examines the initiative of the adoption
of mobile technology by measuring the degree of acceptance or reluctance the faculty
members of mobile computing devices. The critical factors from the Unified Theory of
Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT; Venkatesh et al., 2003) and Division Innovation
Theory (Rogers, 2003) and the extended constructs (Resistance to change) that affect the
acceptance of ML will be tested in this study. Therefore, this case study uses a triangulation
or mixed philosophical approach. A mixed methods approach is selected because “the
combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches provides a better understanding of
research problems than either approach alone” (Creswell et al., 2007, p.8). A combination of
quantitative and qualitative research will be conducted via questionnaires and interviews
with groups of lecturers at King Abdulaziz University. After analyzing the survey and the data
collected during the quantitative phase, synchronous online semi-structured interviews will
be conducted.
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