A model of teachers' growth mindset, teaching enjoyment, work engagement, and teacher grit among EFL teachers

Li Liu; Jalil Fathi; Seyyed Pedram Allahveysi; Kimia Kamran

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1137357

A model of teachers' growth mindset, teaching enjoyment, work engagement, and teacher grit among EFL teachers

Front Psychol. 2023 Mar 8:14:1137357. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1137357. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Li Liu¹, Jalil Fathi², Seyyed Pedram Allahveysi³, Kimia Kamran³

Affiliations

¹ School of Marxism, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
² Department of English and Linguistics, Faculty of Language and Literature, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.
³ Department of English Language and Literature, University of Ilam, Ilam, Iran.

Abstract

Because of the importance of positive emotions in second language (L2) acquisition, researchers have undertaken studies to investigate L2 learners' emotions. Nevertheless, L2 teachers' emotions still require more scholarly attention. Against this backdrop, we sought to test a model of teachers' growth mindset, teaching enjoyment, work engagement, and teacher grit among English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers. To this end, 486 Chinese EFL teachers volunteered to partake in an online survey and completed the questionnaires of the four constructs in question. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to ensure the construct validity of the used scales. Then structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypothesized model. SEM results indicated that teaching enjoyment, teacher grit, and growth mindset directly predicted EFL teachers' work engagement. In addition, teaching enjoyment affected work engagement indirectly via the mediation of teacher grit. Likewise, teacher grit mediated the effect of growth mindset on teachers' work engagement. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords: EFL teachers; growth mindset; teacher grit; teaching enjoyment; work engagement.