Study on the relationship between the professional identity and the work engagement of teachers in private universities

Abstract

This study tries to take professional identity (PI) and job involvement (JI) as the starting points of the research and briefly discusses the characteristics of PI and JI of teachers in Chinese private universities as well as the main factors affecting the level of PI and JI of teachers. This paper analyzes the relationship between the professional identity (PI) and the work engagement (WE) of 530 teachers at a private university in China using questionnaires surveys, interviews and statistics. The result shows that 1) a teacher’s professional identity at a private university provides a positive prediction for work engagement. 2) The professional identity (PI) of teachers in different phases of professional development has level and structural differences in its relationship to work engagement (WE). The PI of teachers in private universities is generally in the middle range among which professional motivation is the highest and professional emotional benefit is the lowest. There are significant differences in career identity across different career development periods. Through male physical education teachers' sense of professional emotional benefit, professional motivation and professional self-regulation and female physical education teachers' sense of professional motivation and professional self-regulation, the job investment can be predicted.