Reflective teaching and academic optimism as correlates of work engagement among university instructors

As teaching is a complex and demanding activity especially in university and higher education contexts, exploring the correlates of work engagement in university contexts seems to be a promising research area. As an attempt to further clarify this research area, this study sought to examine the significance of reflective teaching and academic optimism as correlates of work engagement among university instructors in Iran. Having been selected via convenience sampling, a sample of 289 Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) university instructors participated in this survey. The electronic versions of the scales of teacher academic optimism, reflective teaching, and work engagement were administered to the participants. Initially, the construct validity of the scales was verified for the university contexts via performing confirmatory factor analysis. Then the hypothesized structural relationships among the constructs were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results demonstrated that both reflective teaching and academic optimism significantly predicted work engagement among English university instructors. Some notable implications are finally discussed based on these findings.