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

This study examined the relationship between secondary school teachers’ perceptions of school happiness and their organizational commitment, and asked which dimensions of school happiness account for that relationship. A cross-sectional, predictive correlational design was adopted. Data were collected from 521 teachers working in the 20 secondary schools of a district in southeastern Türkiye during the first semester of 2021–2022, the first semester of full-time in-person schooling after the COVID-19 closures, using the School Happiness Scale and the Organizational Commitment Scale. Analyses included multiple regression with squared semipartial correlations, general dominance analysis, and parallel regressions for the three commitment components. Robustness of the dimension-level findings was examined with covariate-adjusted models. School happiness correlated strongly with organizational commitment ( r = .63). The five dimensions jointly explained 41.0% of the variance; learning environment, school management, and physical equipment emerged as significant predictors, whereas collaboration and activities predicted neither overall commitment nor any of its components uniquely. The general pattern was largely reproduced across the three commitment components. The principal findings were robust to adjustment for professional seniority, tenure at the current school, employment status, and school type. Moving from the composite to the dimension level, the findings indicate 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, and contribute evidence from the under-documented return-to-school period.