Beyond the paycheck: Chinese rural teacher well-being and the impact of professional learning and local community engagement
Abstract
This paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand the structure and determinants for rural teacher well-being (TWB), with a focus on key factors that can mediate low pay and poor work conditions, specifically teachers’ professional learning (PL) and community engagement (CE). This framework was tested using structural equation model in a sample of 3155 rural teachers in China. The quantitative results confirmed a second-order factor structure for TWB, evidencing the significant impact of pay satisfaction and the mediating effects of PL and CE of rural teachers. Implications encourage policymakers to strengthen rural TWB by enhancing PL and community connections, while continuing to seek ways to improve pay and work conditions.
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Teacher well-being was shown to be relevant for teacher stress, teaching professional values, job satisfaction and social support, teacher negative affect, and burnout.
“TWB was shown to be relevant for teacher stress (Renshaw et al., 2015;Vazi et al., 2013), teaching professional values, job satisfaction and social support (Tang et al., 2018), as well as for teacher negative affect (Vazi et al., 2013) and burnout (Renshaw et al., 2015).”
From Teacher well-being: A systematic review of the research literature from the year 2000–2019 (2021) · cites this paper as Tang et al., 2018
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Teacher well-being: A systematic review of the research literature from the year 2000–2019
Hascher, T., & Waber, J. (2021) · Educational Research Review · doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2021.100411 · Cited by 680 · see citing works
- Authors
- Tang, Y., He, W., Liu, L., & Li, Q.
- Affiliations
- Capital Normal University (CN)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Indiana University – Purdue University Columbus (US)
- Corresponding author
- Li, Qiong
- Venue
- Teachers and Teaching
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2018-05-10
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 825-839
- ISSN
- 1354-0602 (ISSN-L)
- 1470-1278
- OpenAlex
- W2802097562
- Cited by
- 41
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 8 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 11.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Teachers and Teaching (publishedVersion)
- IUScholarWorks (Indiana University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Ministry of Education (15JJD880006)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Education in Rural Contexts
- Social Sciences › Education › Teacher Professional Development and Motivation
- Social Sciences › Education › Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
- Keywords
- teacher well-being, rural teachers, professional learning, community participation, teacher salaries, pay satisfaction, working conditions, mediating effect, second-order factor structure, rural education, China
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