Comparative Analysis of Psychological Well-Being of Public and Private Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

Psychological well-being (PWB) of secondary school teachers is an important factor in institutional effectiveness, teaching quality and students' developmental outcomes. But comparative empirical evidence on multidimensional PWB in public and private education sectors in educational contexts is limited. This study was conducted to explore and compare the PWB of secondary school teachers of public schools and private schools of Punjab, Pakistan. This study adopted a quantitative comparative survey design and used a multistage random sampling technique to collect empirical data from N = 437 secondary school teachers from Gujranwala Division (Gujranwala, Narowal, Sialkot districts). Psychological well-being was assessed with the Ryff's Scales of Psychological Well-Being (30 item adaptation was validated in the Turkish language by Akin et al., 2012), which consists of six subscales: Autonomy, Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth, Positive Relations with Others, Purpose in Life, and Self-Acceptance. Descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests (with Cohen's d effect sizes) and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA with Tukey HSD post hoc comparisons) were used to analyze the data. These findings show that public and private educators score similarly on the composite well-being index, but they have opposing psychological profiles when it comes to their institutional experiences. The key aspect that educational management interventions need to attend to in the public school is administrative decentralization and in the private school, the enhancement of job security.

Key words: Secondary school teachers, Psychological well-being, Educational administration