School happiness dimensions predict teacher commitment in Turkey

A cross-sectional predictive study published in BMC Psychology by Mehmet Ateş and Mevlüt Kara examined the relationship between secondary school teachers’ perceptions of school happiness and their organizational commitment, investigating which specific dimensions of school happiness account for that relationship. Moving from composite measures to the dimension level, the researchers found that the happiness–commitment relationship is associated primarily with the conditions schools provide for teaching rather than with the collegial and social activity surrounding it. Overall school happiness correlated strongly with organizational commitment among the participating teachers, but analyzing individual dimensions demonstrated that distinct institutional factors accounted for this association during the return to full-time in-person schooling.

The research focused on the under-documented return-to-school period following the disruptions of the pandemic. Data were collected during the first semester of the 2021–2022 academic year, which marked the first semester of full-time in-person schooling after COVID-19 closures. The study adopted a cross-sectional, predictive correlational design and sampled 521 teachers working across the 20 secondary schools of a single district located in southeastern Türkiye. By gathering data across all twenty secondary schools within the district during this specific reopening semester, the authors captured teachers’ workplace perceptions at a time when schools were transitioning back to full-time classroom instruction.

To measure the relevant constructs, the authors administered the School Happiness Scale and the Organizational Commitment Scale to the participants. The analytic framework relied on multiple regression with squared semipartial correlations, general dominance analysis, and parallel regressions conducted for each of the three components of organizational commitment. To verify whether the dimension-level findings were stable and independent of demographic and occupational characteristics, the researchers evaluated covariate-adjusted models. These models adjusted for professional seniority, tenure at the current school, employment status, and school type, allowing the team to examine the unique predictive contribution of each dimension.

The empirical analyses indicated that school happiness correlated strongly with organizational commitment, yielding a correlation coefficient of r = .63. When all five dimensions of school happiness were evaluated jointly, they explained 41.0% of the variance in teachers’ organizational commitment. However, predictive power varied substantially across individual dimensions. Learning environment, school management, and physical equipment emerged as statistically significant predictors of commitment. In contrast, collaboration and activities did not uniquely predict overall commitment, nor did they uniquely predict any of the three individual commitment components.

This general pattern of findings was largely reproduced across the three separate commitment components evaluated in the parallel regressions. The principal results also proved robust in the covariate-adjusted models, maintaining their predictive relationships after controlling for professional seniority, tenure at the current school, employment status, and school type. The authors concluded that the relationship between school happiness and organizational commitment is associated primarily with the conditions schools provide for teaching rather than with the collegial and social activity surrounding it. Because the investigation used a cross-sectional predictive correlational design restricted to secondary schools in one district in southeastern Türkiye, the findings describe statistical predictions and associations rather than causal effects.

Subject of Research: Which dimensions of school happiness predict teachers’ organizational commitment? Evidence from Turkish secondary schools

Article Title: Which dimensions of school happiness predict teachers’ organizational commitment? Evidence from Turkish secondary schools

Article References: Ateş, M., & Kara, M. (2026). Which dimensions of school happiness predict teachers’ organizational commitment? Evidence from Turkish secondary schools. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05864-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05864-w

Keywords: dimensions, school, happiness, predict, teachers, organizational, commitment, Evidence, Turkish, secondary, schools, scientific research