Teachers’ Facilitation Between Work and Family Roles: Myth or Reality?

With the Italian school system undergoing important changes, administrators are faced with several issues, such as how to sustain teacher performance, motivate their collaborators and smooth the attrition between work and family roles. Teachers are usually expected to experience high levels of work family facilitation. Facilitation is defined as the extent to which participation at work (home) is made easier by virtue of the experiences, skills, and opportunities gained or developed at home (work). The purpose of the present study is to shed light on the facilitation between work and family roles experienced by teachers. We posit that different types of facilitation experienced in the direction work to family will have a positive impact on organizational (i.e. organizational citizenship behavior) and personal outcomes (i.e. work satisfaction). 124 teachers were interviewed in the study. The self report questionnaire was structured in two parts: the first one included demographic variables (e.g. gender), the second was dedicated to work family facilitation and work outcomes (e.g. work satisfaction). Hierarchical multiple regressions were performed to test the hypotheses. Findings show that teachers work satisfaction is influenced by psychological facilitation, while organizational citizenship behavior benefits from time-based facilitation. Our results confirm the general belief that teachers experience a certain amount of facilitation between work and family roles. School principals may take into account especially the importance of time-based facilitation on the performance of pro-social behaviors.