Quality of School Work Life of Public School Teachers : Cases from Turkey and Pakistan

The Quality of Work life (QWL) is the employees’ feeling or perception of being comfortable with their work. The objective of the present study was to compare Quality of School Work Life (QSWL) of public school teachers from Turkey and Pakistan. A QSWL scale developed by Ilgan, Ata, Zepeda and Ozu-Cengiz (2014) having 30 items was used as the research instrument. The sample included 995 Turkish teachers (from 8 cities) and 716 Pakistani teachers (from 5 cities of Punjab). Reliability coefficient of QSWL scale was 0.81. Further, five subscales within the QSWL tools were identified through its exploratory factor analysis. On all these 5 subscales of QSWL (when analysed separately), Turkish and Pakistani teachers Vol. 4 No. 2 (Dec 2017) 244 Article Journal of Education and Educational Development


Introduction
The QWL is the employees' feeling or perception of being comfortable with their work (Ketchum & Trist, 1992).The objective of the present study was to compare QSWL of public school teachers from Turkey and Pakistan.The term Quality of Work Life was initiated by Irving Bluestone, the Vice President of United Automobile Workers during 1970-80, which played a pivotal role in making decisions regarding improving the working conditions of the employees within an organisation.Thereafter, many researchers (Kandasamy & Ancheri, 2009;Lau, 2000;Lau & May, 1998;Robbins, 1989) made substantial research contribution in this area.
The QWL focuses on improving the work climate so that employees can lead better work life (Luthans, 1995) and be more happy, useful, competent, flexible and productive for the organisation (Suttle, 1977).Consequently, both organisational efficiency and employees' happiness are improved.
Measuring QWL, being a multi-dimensional construct, is complex as various researchers operationalized it differently.
Research indicates that the concept of QWL is not limited to union laws, equal employment opportunities and job satisfaction (Walton, 1973); nor it is restricted to the factors such as autonomy at work, opportunities for learning or interaction with colleagues Boisvert, 1977); rather, it encompasses the processes of meeting employees' needs by extending a mechanism to involve them in decision making regarding their professional lives (Robbins, 1989).
QWL may be defined as employees' aspirations regarding their job settings, wages and professional growth, balance between professional and private life and security and relationships with colleagues at the workplace.QWL involves factors that affect job satisfaction at the workplace such as cheerfulness and subjective well-being (Sirgy, Efraty, Siegel, & Lee, 2001).It also refers to the supportive and encouraging working atmosphere which promotes employee satisfaction, ensures better salaries, job security and development opportunities for them (Lau & May, 1998).
According to Royuela, Lopez-Tamayo and Surinach (2008), the various dimensions of QWL include intrinsic value of work, skills development and career, health and safety, work organisation and work-life balance and social dialogue and employees' engagement.
Improved morale of employees and enhanced efficiency of organisations were identified to be the outcome of QWL programs (Hanlon & Gladstein, 1984).Lewis, Brazil, Krueger, Lohfeld and Tjam (2001) believe that supervisory practices along with wages and benefits are the key factors in employees' satisfaction.QWL has also been found to have a direct impact on human outcomes as it develops working conditions for people (Kanagalakshmi & Devei, 2003), significantly minimizes absenteeism (Havlovic, 1991), increases employee turnover and improves quality of professional life (Ruzevicius, 2007).Chaos, weariness, and resentment are common factors that create disappointment among workers.
Unsatisfied work life leads towards underperformance (Walton, 1973); therefore, QWL is a great factor that motivates employees in improving organisational and operational productivity (Ruzevicius, 2007).
Based on these characteristics, it was imperative to measure the quality of work life of public school teachers in Turkey and Pakistan and compare the level of quality in these two countries.The literature provides little evidence of previous studies that compares teacher QWL in Turkey and Pakistan; therefore to fill in this gap, the researchers conducted this preliminary study.Comparing teacher quality in Turkey and Pakistan was significant as both the countries have similar cultural and Islamic values, but being geographically different they might have different levels of quality of teachers' work lives.Pakistan is a developing country with limited resources and facilities in its public schools, while Turkey is a technologically advanced country with better facilities in its schools.This comparative study provided a vivid, coherent and clear picture of the teachers' perceptions regarding the construct.This study may help policymakers in both countries to revisit aspects related to the wellbeing and quality of their teachers.
The study involved the following research hypotheses: 1. Turkish and Pakistani teachers do not significantly differ on the QSWL.
2. Male and female teachers do not significantly differ on the QSWL.
3. Married and single teachers do not significantly differ on the QSWL.

Theoretical Framework
Theoretical framework involves interrelated concepts that guide research.This study considers the model of Walton (1973) measuring the five interrelated concepts of QWL namely: healthy and decent work conditions, administrative support, facilities at work, developmental opportunities, and decent and fair wages.The study assumed that the teachers who will receive higher score on these dimensions would be enjoying higher level of QWL, while the teachers who will receive lower score would be enjoying lower level of QWL in their schools.

Literature Review
Quality of work life (QWL) is perceived as an important factor of the overall life quality.It is a continuous process of making improvements in the work, making it favourable for the people within the organisation.It involves strategies that increase satisfaction of employees and aims to improve working conditions in the organisations (Lau & May, 1998).The organisations which favour employees' QWL attract high performing workers as they feel secured and privileged and perform better.The organisation with an environment conducive to learning and growth for their employees makes them realize that the organisation considers them as dependable and capable of contributing towards achieving the organisational goals (Rose, Beh, Uli, & Idris, 2006;Tabassum, Rahim, & Khan, 2011).Sasser, Schlesinger and Heskett (1997) perceived that QWL is how employees feel about their jobs, colleagues and organisations and this increases organisations' development and productivity.Gadon (1984) grouped the dimensions of "personal and professional development, work redesign, team building, work scheduling and total organisational change" (p.45) into the QWL construct.Gadon was of the opinion that QWL programs are meant to "enhance productivity and increase the satisfaction of employees, which could lead to better work performance and a better quality of life in the society" (p.45).Havlovic (1991) presented a model of QWL with its basic components as job satisfaction, job security, employee benefits, employee involvement, better reward system and organisational performance.Havlovic stated that QWL is a direct impact on human outcomes that considerably reduces absenteeism and burnouts.Administrative support.Teachers perceive that they enjoy maximum support from their head teachers, and, their administrators collaborate with them frequently.The teachers feel that they can speak to their administrators freely, get assistance related to their work, are trusted and treated equally and may exercise and defend their rights freely.

Facilities at work. This provides evidence of teachers' satisfaction
with benefits such as health and accommodation facilities.
Developmental opportunities.Teachers feel privileged to make decisions about their work at school, utilize their abilities at schools and are provided with opportunities to change or update their nature of work.
Decent and fair wages.QWL also includes teachers' perceptions of decent and fair wages matching the market.This would positively affect their commitment to work.

Methodology
Descriptive survey design was used to compare teachers' QSWL from two different countries, that is, Turkey and Pakistan.
Surveys allowed gathering data about the participants' beliefs which are usually difficult to record through observation (McIntyre, 1999).
Additionally, surveys help to provide more information from a large sample (Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hun, 2011).

Sample
Public school teachers from Pakistan and Turkey constituted the population for this study.Multistage sampling frame was adopted for both countries.Using cluster random sampling technique, 35 schools were carefully chosen from conveniently selected five cities (Okara, Multan, Faisalabad, Lahore and Sargodha) from the province of Punjab.The sample selected from these five cities consisted of 716 teachers who were working in these schools.The research instrument was administered to teachers in their respective schools and the response rate was very high (93 %).
Data from a sample of 995 teachers in Turkey were gathered from conveniently selected eight cities (Ankara, İzmir, Manisa, Mardin, Isparta, Düzce, Kocaeli and Zonguldak), which represented seven different regions of the country.Each school was taken as a cluster and all teachers present at the time of the survey were included in the sample.The survey encompassed 128 schools and 1200 questionnaires were distributed.The response rate for Turkish survey was also high (82.9%) yielding 995 responses.The sample from both countries is described in Table 1 with respect to gender, marital status, subject of teacher, and age.Originally, the QSWL was in English/Turkish.The scale was translated into Urdu language by two teachers teaching Urdu at a public college.This Urdu version of QSWL was given to two teachers of English at the same public college who retranslated the scale into English language.Some discrepancies were found in Urdu translated versions which were resolved accordingly and the final versions were piloted and no issues were highlighted.

Data analysis
For data analysis, SPSS (Version 20) was used.Basic statistics were computed to measure the overall perceptions of the teachers on QSWL.Independent sample t-test was used to compare teachers' perceived QSWL level for countries, gender and their marital status along with Pearson's correlations coefficients to define teachers' age and perceived quality of school work life.The skewness (0.000) and Kurtosis (0.166) indexes of the composite QSWL scale ranged between -1 and 1, demonstrating an excellent range (George & Mallery 2001).These results would be suggestive to use parametric statistics.

Results
Descriptive statistics were calculated to measure the mean and standard deviation values of each dimension as well as overall results.Table 3 showed descriptive statistics of QSWL of Turkish and Pakistani teachers.satisfied with the facilities provided to them at their schools.
To compare Turkish and Pakistani teachers' perceptions of their QSWL, t-test for independent samples was run.Results are presented in Table 4.However, the composite score demonstrates that Turkish and Pakistani teachers did not significantly differ on the QSWL scale as (n=1711) t= -1.145, P > 0.252.Thus, the null hypothesis that Turkish and Pakistani teachers do not significantly differ on the QWL failed to be rejected.
T-test for independent samples was run to compare Turkish and Pakistani teachers' perceptions on the composite score of their QSWL on the basis of gender and marital status.Summary of the results is given below in Table 5. respectively.Thus, the null hypothesis that Turkish and Pakistani teachers do not significantly differ on the QWL based on their gender was rejected for females, but was retained in case of males.
Further, the null hypothesis that Turkish and Pakistani teachers did not significantly differ on the QWL based on their marital status also failed to be rejected.
Pearson correlation results between age and QSWL composite scale are given below in Table 6.The results showed that there was significant (however,  (in 2014, as five point Likert X= 2.48) relatively lesser than the present research result.In addition to this, Erdem (2008) found that 61% of teachers needed a second job.Imazeki (2005) reported that Wisconsin's teachers' retention is higher when salaries are higher; this was consistent with findings of Ingersoll (2002) that the higher the starting salaries of teachers, the less would be the chance of teachers taking up a second job.Other researchers (Loeb & Page, 2000;Flanagan & Grissmer, 2006;Brittona & Propper, 2016) found a relationship between higher teacher salaries and better student results.Tye and O'Brien (2002) established that salary consideration was numbered as the second reason why teachers wanted to leave the teaching profession in California; whereas Useem's (2003) research reported that low salary was the primary reason for teachers leaving the district to opt for higher paying jobs.Ozpolat (2002) revealed that 56% of teachers would leave their job if they find a higher paid job in Turkey.Consistent with research results conducted by Zare, Haghgooyan and Asl (2014) which revealed that work economic factor as a QWL dimension was at an undesirable level (on five point Likert X= 2.78).Baleghizadeh and Gordani (2012) found that for Iranian secondary school teachers, fair and appropriate compensation as dimension of QSWL was at a low level (as five point Likert X= 1,37).For USA teachers Sirgy et al., (2001) identified QSWL to be at a middle level (as seven point Likert X= 3,77).Al- , Al-Dabaneh and Ahmad (2015) revealed in their study that Jordanian special education teachers were more comfortable with their income.

Zboon
The present research revealed that Pakistani teachers had an average level of QSWL, similar to that of their Turkish counterparts.
In other words, schools in Pakistan offer teachers an average QWL.
Pakistani teachers demonstrated highest mean score on healthy and decent work conditions subscale of QSWL, whereas the least mean score was on the subscale of facilities at work at their organisations.
A research conducted by Buckley, Schneider and Yi (2004) indicated that facilities at school are important determinants of the decision to remain in their teaching position among Washington (USA) teachers.They concluded that "As the perceived quality of the school facilities improves, ceteris paribus, the probability of retention increases" (p. 7).It is agreed upon that facilities at schools are hardly ideal and often utterly scarce (Johnson, Berg & Donaldson, 2005).conducted a research under UNESCO (Islamabad) and found that 9% of public primary schools do not have blackboards, 24% do not have textbooks and 46% do not have desks.Others found similar results which demonstrated evidence of lack of facilities in schools (Farooq, 2013;Government of Pakistan, 2004;Memon, 2007).
QSWL for Jordanian special education teachers (Al-

Conclusion and Recommendations
The present research revealed that Turkish teachers demonstrated higher mean score on the dimensions of administrative support, facilities at work, and developmental opportunities than Royuela, Lopez-Tamayo and Surinach (2008) measured quality of working life, and identified various dimensions of QWL such as health and safety, social dialogue and employees' engagement, intrinsic value of work, work organisation and work-life balance, diversity and non-discrimination.The indicators mentioned above are cognizant with the work of earlier researchers; as such for the current research, the researchers chose Walton's (1973) model for the purpose of the present survey.In the following sections, five categories of QWL have been described briefly to give an overview of the dimensions to the readers.Healthy and decent work condition.This involves providing such conditions in the school where teachers feel healthy and privileged with their jobs: they do not feel any risk to their lives, can work freely and have conductive learning environment.Furthermore, they find their job interesting and their experiences pleasant.Teachers believe that they are enjoying opportunities for professional development and their perceived values match with those of the school, resulting in overall satisfaction with the working conditions of the school.
decent and fair wages (in 2008, as five point Likert X= 2.32) and

Zare,
Haghgooyan and Asl (2014) found in their study that factors related to job content as a QWL dimension were at a desirable level (as five point Likert X= 3.22) among Iranian teachers.They had an average level (as five point Likert X= 2.94) for work conditions, subscale of QSWL, which is similar to that of Pakistani teacher participants.Pakistani teachers' highest score on healthy and decent work conditions subscale demonstrated that the majority of the teachers felt healthy and honoured at their jobs; they worked freely and had found their job interesting and pleasant.Teachers believed that they were enjoying opportunities for professional development and their values matched with the school values.Previous researches provided a similar picture of decent work conditions in the country.For example, Aslam (2013) compared professional development practices in public and private schools in Pakistan and found that teachers in both types of institutes agreed that their institutions were determined to not only provide professional development practices to their teachers but also to enhance such practices.Studies also found that teachers in Pakistan felt honoured at their jobs(Rauf, Akhtar, Iqbal & Malik, 2013) and considered their job interesting(Shah, Akhtar, Zafar & Riaz, 2012).However, the current study found that there are fewer facilities provided at work in the schools in Pakistan.Pakistani teachers' score on facilities at work was the least among the five factors of QSWL.Previous studies also found similar results: For example,Nadeem, Rana, Lone, Maqbool, Naz and Ali (2011)    conducted a study on female teachers' competences and factors affecting their performance in Pakistan and they discovered that the majority (74%) of the teachers viewed that their schools lacked facilities at work which affected their performance.Lynd (2007) Pakistani teachers; whereas, Pakistani teachers demonstrated a significantly higher mean score on healthy and decent work conditions and decent and fair wages significantly as compared to their Turkish counterparts.Turkish teachers had relatively low level of satisfaction regarding decent and fair wages which implied that income and other benefits should be increased.This research further revealed that Pakistani female teachers demonstrated a considerably higher mean value on the overall score of the QSWL compared to their Turkish female fellows.Lastly, married and single teachers of both countries did not significantly differ on the composite score of the QSWL.Based on the conclusion of present research it is recommended that Pakistani teachers should be provided more administrative support, facilities at work, and development opportunities from both the district and provincial authorities.The government of Punjab can take supportive measures by allocating more funds for providing more facilities and professional development opportunities.Further, it is recommended that the Turkish government should provide considerable support to the female teachers of the sampled cities for improving their quality of work life.The current study involved relatively smaller sample size of single (marital status) teachers; further studies should be conducted with a larger sample size of single teachers to get deeper understanding of the quality of work life of teachers of both countries.Further studies are recommended with larger sample size randomly selected from both countries.

Table 1
Description of the Sample

Table 2
Validation of the QSWL Based on the results of the CFA, 8 items were excluded due to low factor loadings.Thereby, QSWL Scale explained 51.28% of the total variance.Factor loadings ranged from 0.432 to 0.784.The data described that reliability coefficients ranged from 0.50 (decent and fair wages) to 0.78 (healthy and decent work conditions) with the overall high reliability of the instrument (α=.81).The results suggested that the validated QSWL Scale was reliable.

Table 3
Descriptive Statistics of QSWL's Dimensions facilities at work.Pakistani teachers demonstrated highest mean score on Healthy and decent work conditions (M= 3.61, SD = 0.68) in their organisations, followed by Decent and fair wages (M= 3.52, SD = 0.83).The lowest mean score was found on facilities at work (M=2.65,SD = 0.75), meaning they were somewhat agreed or

Table 5
Demographics Based Comparison on Teachers' Quality of School

Table 6
Pearson Correlation between Age and Quality of School Work Life Point *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Mentz (2001)nt with the results of this research, but almost nine in 10 said that they would be encouraged to stay in the profession if there was a better work-life balance that may refer to importance of QSWL for retention in the teaching profession.Another research revealed that Iranian secondary school teachers had medium level of QSWL (as seven point Likert X= 2.63); which is less as compared to Turkish and Pakistani teachers; whereasMentz (2001)indicated that South African rural teachers reported their satisfaction with their QSWL.All this discussion is perceptible only if considered in its respective geographical or socioeconomic context.