Can high-involvement management enhance teacher professionalism in China? A structural equation modeling analysis

Abstract

As a multifaceted concept, teacher professionalism lays particular emphasis on strong moral purposes and commitment to the teaching profession in the Chinese cultural context, compared with teacher agency, but it is not yet known whether it can be enhanced by high-involvement management in Chinese schools. By conducting a questionnaire survey of primary and secondary school teachers, this study used structural equation modeling to unpack the relationship between high-involvement management and teacher professionalism. The results showed that high-involvement management had a significant positive effect on career commitment and positive emotions of teachers, which both exerted the positive effects on professionalism. Career commitment and positive emotions play the single mediation and sequential mediation between high-involvement management and teacher professionalism. The high-involvement management model cannot directly facilitate professionalism, but only have an indirect positive impact through the full mediation of career commitment and positive emotions.