Teachers' Growth Mindset and Work Engagement in the Chinese Educational Context: Well-Being and Perseverance of Effort as Mediators

Guang Zeng; Xinjie Chen; Hoi Yan Cheung; Kaiping Peng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00839

Teachers' Growth Mindset and Work Engagement in the Chinese Educational Context: Well-Being and Perseverance of Effort as Mediators

Front Psychol. 2019 Apr 18:10:839. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00839. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Guang Zeng¹, Xinjie Chen², Hoi Yan Cheung³, Kaiping Peng^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
² Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
³ Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau, China.
⁴ Department Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

The current study investigated the relationships among growth mindset, work engagement, perseverance of effort and well-being for secondary school teachers in the Chinese educational context. We adopted Growth Mindset Inventory, Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), Grit Scale (Perseverance subscale), and PERMA profiles that measure five dimensions of well-being. Participants included 472 secondary school teachers from 10 secondary schools in central China. Correlation analysis showed that growth mindset, well-being, and perseverance of effort could all predict work engagement. Moreover, the structural equation model and mediation analysis further suggested that well-being and perseverance of effort could partially mediate the relationship between growth mindset and work engagement. This study permitted to advance our knowledge about the relationship between growth mindset and work engagement, which should be considered for future teaching practices and teacher development.

Keywords: Chinese; effort; growth mindset; perseverance; positive psychology; teachers; well-being; work engagement.