Pragmatic Research On Work Engagement Of Primary And Secondary School Teachers

Being an important professional ethics in China, work engagement is the most basic requirement of career people, and it is the guarantee of national prosperity, ethnic progress and individual development. Regarded as the engineer of human souls, teachers undoubtedly should have a spirit of greatest work engagement. However, some researches think that under the impact of market economy, because of the penetration of ideology such as money worship, hedonism and extreme individualism, some teachers, particularly young teachers, are tired of the holy responsibility, and ignore teaching and educating people, and there even occurs a crisis of teachers' work engagement. Therefore, the research to promote teachers' work engagement has great significance. Literature reviews find the related researches mostly centered on speculation, few conducted pragmatic research on teachers' work engagement. In view of the importance of the research and defects in existed researches, this research takes primary and secondary school teachers and subjects, and conducts a systematic study on the content, structure, mechanisms and functions of teachers' work engagement based on a combination of pragmatic and speculative approaches from the perspective of psychology.This research is composed of seven parts. Part One reviews studies on work engagement home and abroad. Part Two is the research questions, structure and hypothesis. Part Three identifies the concepts of work engagement, work investment and responsibility through two studies, and ascertains the typical characteristics of work engagement, adopting feature distinguishing method and semantic analysis. Part Four, the center of the research, systematically explores the measure of work engagement through eight studies. Firstly, based on interview, public views survey and existed literature, the dimensions and operational definition are made. Secondly, in the second and third studies, teachers' self-evaluation questionnaire and students' evaluation questionnaire of work engagement are developed based on the operational definition and stages of scale development. The forth study develops an implicit association test of work engagement attitude, and conducts a correlation analysis of the implicit attitudes and explicit work engagement. In the fifth to eighth studies, convergent validity, the criteria-related validityand discriminate validity of teachers' work engagement self-evaluation scale are explored further. Part Five analyzes the general characteristics of primary and secondary school teachers' work engagement and those in different background variables. Part Six has four studies. The first investigates the correlation between work demand-resources and engagement, the second personal teaching self-efficacy, achievement motivation and work engagement, and the third job stress, turnover intention, job performance, and mental health. In the forth study, the job resource model is constructed, which integrates environmental factor (job resource), personal resources (achievement motivation, and personal teaching efficacy), work engagement and word achievement. Part Seven is general discussion.Conclusions are made as follow: (1) Teachers' work engagement, investment, and responsibility are closely related and different from each other. Each of them has its typical characteristics. (2)Work engagement is individuals' relatively stable psychological and behavioral traits, which are manifested as love and joy in one's work, earnest and responsibility, diligence and enterprise, absorption and dedication, spirit of innovation. Teachers' work engagement is a relatively stable psychological and behavioral trait of teachers, which is manifested as love and joy in teaching, responsibility in teaching, caring students, diligence and enterprise, spirit of dedication and innovation. (3) Teachers' self-evaluation questionnaire and students' evaluation questionnaire of work engagement developed in this research have good reliability and validity. (4) The implicit attitudes of teachers' work engagement is positive, which is manifested as faster reaction times for compatible block than incompatible block. The implicit and explicit attitudes of work engagement are relatively independent. (5) Teachers' self-evaluation questionnaire of work engagement has good criterion related validity, and validity of the distinction and convergence. (6} The work engagement of primary and secondary school teachers is generally lower, and there are differences of work engagement in variables as sex, marital status, education, work length, school types, and school nature. (7) Job resources predict work engagement, but work demands cannot predict work engagement, and job resources and work demands are significantly negatively correlated. (8) Personal teaching efficacy directly affects work engagement, and indirectly affects work engagement through achievement motivation, and achievement motivation directly affects engagement. (9) Work engagement is not the mediator between work stress and mental health;. Work engagement is the partial moderator between work stress and turnover intention; and it is also the partial moderator between work stress and mental health; and it is the whole moderator variable between work stress and work performance. (10) The job resources model of engagement integrates environmental variables, personal resources, interaction of environment and individuals, work engagement and its outcomes, which turns to be acceptable based on the pragmatic research.In sum, this research offers the following contributions: (1) Theoretical contribution. This research attaches great importance to the Chinese culture, and it is the first time in China that primary and secondary school teachers have been studied, and through a deeper discussion on their work engagement, theory and measurement instalments have been developed to explore the characteristics and related factor of engagement, which furthers the job resources model of work engagement. The results may contribute to the indigenous study of work engagement, and the enrichment of engineer psychology, organization behaviorism and developmental and educational psychology. (2) Practical contribution. The results can be applied to social practice. The questionnaires developed can be used to evaluate and understand teachers' work engagement, which lays strong foundation of future management of teachers' work engagement. The research on the characteristics of work engagement and the relevant researches help understand the factors affecting work engagement, which will be significant to effectively promote teachers' work engagement. (3) Methodological contribution. On the basis of theoretical construction and pragmatic researches, work engagement measurement is studied through the combination of self-report and other-evaluation, implicit and explicit methods, which is an innovation of method, and a guarantee of the validity of the instrument. Besides, it is the first instrument ever developed to test primary and secondary school teachers'work engagement in China.