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The purpose of this paper, three-study research project, is to establish and validate a two-dimensional scale to measure teachers’ and school administrators’ accountability disposition.

The scale items were developed in focus groups, and the final measure was tested on various samples of Israeli teachers and principals. Real-life accountability scenarios, individual work characteristics and performance evaluation were used for the validation. Correlational as well as multi-level statistical procedures were employed.

Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the two-dimensional structure: external and internal. Study 1 confirmed the convergent validity of the scale vis-à-vis accountability scenarios in teachers’ work. Study 2 confirmed its construct validity vis-à-vis related individual work characteristics such as goal orientation, work ethic and conscientiousness, using school principals as participants. Study 3 confirmed the scale’s predictive validity vis-à-vis teacher work performance.

The scale developed in this study may be used to enhance research on the personal aspect of accountability, contributing to a better understanding of educational systems operating in an accountability environment.

The study offers researchers a tool to measure accountability from an individual perspective. The two-dimensional scale developed in this study may help to point out individual differences in teacher accountability disposition.

The ability to assess personal accountability may contribute to society’s concern with school accountability and its effect on educators’ work.

Educational research in recent years is replete with studies on school accountability, but relatively little has been written on accountability at the individual level of analysis. Few scales exist that measure educators’ self-report accountability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differential relations between two teacher withdrawal behaviors: work absence and lateness, and two types of school ethics: organizational justice (distributive, procedural) and ethical climate (formal, caring), all in the context of school turbulent environment.

Data were collected from 1,016 teachers in 35 Israeli high schools. The GLIMMIX procedure was used to consider simultaneously the hierarchical structure of the data, as well as the two dependent variables (absence and lateness).

The results showed that lateness was negatively related to two relatively short-term aspects of school ethics: distributive justice, in particular for women, and formal ethical climate. Absence was negatively related to a relatively long-term aspect of school ethics: caring climate, in particular for low- to medium-level seniority teachers.

The paper’s theoretical contribution is to explicate the unique relation of each temporal withdrawal behavior to specific dimensions of the school ethical constructs studied.

In order to reduce teachers’ temporal withdrawal behaviors, school management may need to attenuate policy that taps into organizational ethics, while considering the effects of school culture and turbulent environment.

This study offers a time perspective, which fine-tunes understanding of teachers’ lateness and absence behaviors, while pointing out the unique relations of lateness and absence to school ethical within educational policy context.

In light of environmental and organizational trends toward privatization, and in response to changes in sectoral traditional differences, this paper investigated job insecurity (JI) of secondary schoolteachers in the public and private sectors in Israel. The study sample consisted of 326 Israeli schoolteachers. Using a multi‐dimensional measure of JI, where various job facets were addressed, two distinct JI profiles were found: public‐sector schoolteachers tended to emphasize intrinsic job features, while private‐sector schoolteachers tended to emphasize extrinsic ones. Sectoral differences were also found in regard to the adverse effect of JI on work attitudes: in the public sector JI affected organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, and tendency to quit, and in the private sector only tendency to quit was affected. These findings are partly explained by differences in employment structures, and have implications for human resource strategies regarding the provision of job security.

This study is an empirical investigation into the effect of skill flexibility on work attitudes and performance and into managerial attitudes toward skill flexibility. Secondary schools in Israel were used as a case in point, and skill flexibility of teachers was operationalized, distinguishing between role flexibility (the combination of teaching and other school roles) and functional flexibility (the combination of several teaching areas). It was found that both role and functional flexibility were associated with improved teachers’ work performance. Role flexibility was also linked to high organizational commitment and low powerlessness. The findings of the study are supported by interviews with principals, who were generally appreciative of skill‐flexible teachers, but raised practical difficulties related to organizational support of skill flexibility.

This paper aims to offer a theoretical framework for linking school ethical climate with teachers' voluntary absence. The paper attempts to explain this relationship using the concept of affective organizational commitment.

Participants were 1,016 school teachers from 35 high schools in Israel. Data were collected by self‐report questionnaires and tested against archival data. The GENMOD procedure of SAS was applied. This procedure enables regression models for variables which are not necessarily normally distributed – such as absence – to be fit and also to account for the intraclass‐correlations within schools. Absence was measured by frequency of absence events, and ethical climate was measured by two dimensions: caring and formal.

Results show that caring and formal ethical climates are both related to teacher absence. Affective commitment was found to mediate the relationship between formal ethical climate and absence frequency. This is not true for the ethical climate of caring.

School principals may reduce voluntary absence by creating an ethical climate focused on caring and clear and just rules and procedures.

Whereas past research on work absence focused primarily on personal antecedents, the present study addresses factors embedded in school ethics. The results contribute to knowledge of the influence of organizational context on absence behavior.

Using structural equations modeling, this study explored the association between school ethical climate (characterized by values of caring, rules and a professional code) and two types of parental involvement: cooperation‐based and conflict‐based. The mediating effects of perceived parental influence and trust and parents’ socioeconomic (SES) level were considered as well. School‐level data were obtained from 157 teachers representing 20 elementary schools in Israel, and individual‐level data were obtained from 936 parents. Results showed that an ethical climate characterized by rules and a professional code was more common and more strongly related to parental involvement than a caring climate. Different patterns were detected for the two SES groups: high‐SES parents tended to be less involved (both cooperation‐wise and conflict‐wise) than low‐SES ones when the school climate was perceived as more ethical. Results have implications for research on school values and school culture.

To examine the effects of specific personal and job characteristics on year‐to‐year (2000‐2001) changes in teachers' frequency of absences.

With few exceptions, the population of elementary‐ and middle‐school teachers in the Israeli public education system (N=51,916) was studied. Hierarchical regression analysis was used.

Prior absenteeism, age, education, and supervisory position were found to be significant predictors of absenteeism frequency, accounting for about 50 percent of the variance in absence frequency.

This study focuses on relatively stable individual‐difference predictors, including sociodemographic variables and work‐related characteristics, which have been downplayed in the literature. These predictors can be measured more reliably and validly, compared to complex psychological constructs, and are relatively easy to interpret and implement by decision makers.