HAPPINESS AND PROCESS OF CREATING NEW GENERATION TEACHERS’ HAPPINESS AT WORK : A CASE STUDY OF AN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL IN BANGKOK
Keywords:
Process of Creating Happiness, Happiness at Work, Teachers, Alternative SchoolAbstract
Feeling happy at work becomes an essential factor in manging the organizational environment because of the fact that a happy person or an organization that cultivates a happy work environment will make a great power in work creation. Nevertheless, individual persons see happiness differently and have different ways of finding happiness depending on their perspectives and experiences. This study aims to 1) understand the definition and elements of happiness of teachers at work, 2) understand the process of creating happiness of teachers at work, and 3) to find mental and social conditions related to happiness at work of teachers in an alternative school. The key informants in this qualitative case study consisted of lower primary English teachers. The study instrument was a semi-structured interview form for qualitative data analysis.
The findings revealed that 1) happiness could be defined as doing things with passion, being able to do what one wants, loving one’s job, and not getting bored of working. There were 2 elements of happiness at work including internal and external factors. Internal factors comprised loving the work one is doing and having positive mindset. External factors encompassed proper salaries and employee benefits as well as good co-workers, 2) The process of creating teachers’ happiness at work included asking advice from others especially parents when facing problems or feeling uneasy as well as having positive mindset, and 3) mental conditions related to teachers’ happiness at work included passion and job responsibility while a social condition related to their happiness at work was the teacher-student relationship.
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