The Relationship between Teachers’ Job Satisfaction and the Implementation of an Esser Funded Top-down Directive: a Qualitative Case Study

Top-down directives and change initiatives that are made by school administrators can often overlook teachers’ expertise and daily classroom experiences (Dufour, 2007; Jenkins & Jensen, 2010; Varpanen et al., 2022; Zalewska-Bujak, 2023) leading to a perceived loss of autonomy, agency, and efficacy, factors that are crucial for job satisfaction (Bogler & Nir, 2012; Brunetti, 2001; Collie et al., 2016; Pearson & Moomaw, 2005; Pressley & Ha, 2022). When top-down directives are a part of a federal grant agreement, they come as legally binding contracts. Over years of federal funding initiatives, beginning with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 up to the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response funding in the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund of 2020, more and more initiatives have landed on teachers’ desks. As more top-down initiatives tap teachers’ finite resources of time and emotional energy, initiative fatigue results (Reeves, 2011). How are teachers impacted in terms of their job satisfaction when they have to implement top-down directives to meet federal grant criteria? What can administrators do to influence these impacts? This qualitative case study investigates one scenario where teachers have to transition to service-based or project-based learning in a federally funded effort to mitigate learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. By studying these teachers as they implemented these directives, I defined how their job satisfaction was impacted and what administrators are able to do to influence those impacts.