The Impact of Chinese Primary School Teachers’ Sense of Work Meaningfulness on Organizational Commitment: A Chain Mediation Model

Abstract

Purpose

This present study aims to explore the effects of work meaningfulness on primary school teachers’ self-reflection, self-efficacy and organizational commitment and their mechanisms of action.

Methods

This study used a meaningfulness, self-reflection, self-efficacy, and organizational commitment measures. A total of 417 teachers from urban, rural, and mountainous elementary schools were recruited to complete the survey including the measures of work meaningfulness, self-reflection, self-efficacy, and organizational commitment. In this study, descriptive statistics were run using SPSS 26.0 and the relationship model between variables was tested with the SPSS macro program PROCESS.

Results

The study found that work meaningfulness and self-efficacy independently predicted primary school teachers’ organizational commitment, but self-reflection did not significantly predict organizational commitment. It was found that there was a significant positive correlation between the four studied variables of work meaningfulness, self-efficacy, self-reflection, and organizational commitment with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.24 to 0.57. The study also found that work meaningfulness can directly predict elementary school teachers’ organizational commitment, and work meaningfulness can also indirectly predict elementary school teachers’ organizational commitment through self-efficacy and self-reflection.

Conclusion

The results of this study are useful for understanding the value of enhancing the organizational commitment of primary school teachers from a social cognitive perspective, and have implications for how to build a stable, high-quality and dynamic primary school teaching force.

Keywords:

• work meaningfulness
• organizational commitment
• self-reflection
• self-efficacy
• primary school teachers

Data Sharing Statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author Xiangli Guan ([email protected]).

Ethical Approval

The study was also approved by the Ethics Committee of Yuxi Normal University, China (ERB No. 2022007, date: November 14, 2022).

Informed Consent Statement

Given that the participants were human subjects, the study followed the modified Declaration of Helsinki, informed all participants of the study’s purpose, requirements, time required, and principles of data confidentiality, as well as obtained informed consent from all before participating.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the staff involved in the revision and translation of the research instrument, whose work ensured the validity of the research instrument and the successful completion of the study.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the 2021 Yunnan Provincial Education Science Planning Project (BFJC21016).