Teaching severely mentally handicapped children: A source of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction?

This paper reports an investigation of the job satisfaction of teachers of severely mentally handicapped (smh) schools in Hong Kong. Responses to a modified version of the Job Description Index (JDI) are shown to be internally consistent and evidence is presented of the convergent and discriminant validity of the JDI scales. The teachers of the smh students were shown to be content with aspects of their job other than promotion opportunities, more so than representative samples of Hong Kong primary, secondary, and moderate grade mentally handicapped school teachers and psychiatric nurses. The JDI scales showed some power to predict intention to leave their current job. Copyright © 2000 De La Salle University, Philippines.