Teaching in China's Heartland: A qualitative exploration of rural teacher job satisfaction

Enhancing rural teacher job satisfaction, which is a pivotal aspect in elevating the overall quality of rural education, serves as a crucial means to promote balanced educational development and to foster societal equity and cohesion. The objective of the study was to explore the factors that influence job satisfaction of rural teachers teaching in China's Heartland. 15 rural primary school teachers were meticulously chosen for in-depth interviews, utilizing a qualitative research paradigm and purposive sampling technique, spanning from March 2021 to July 2021. With reference to Hoppock's view of job satisfaction, this study designed an interview outline based on specificities of rural workplaces. Through in-depth interviews, a wealth of first-hand text materials was collected about rural teacher job satisfaction. Then these textual materials were processed with a rigorous tertiary coding based on grounded theory. This study found that rural teacher job satisfaction was influenced by various factors, encompassing both external and internal factors. External factors included national policies, campus culture, and rural environment. Internal factors included growth experience and self-cognition. Further, strong external support was strongly associated with improvement of rural teacher job satisfaction. Intra-individual characteristics of rural teachers were the most implicit influencing factors.