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

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.