Teachers’ job crafting: The complicated relationship with teacher self-efficacy and teacher engagement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Teacher engagement is critical to teachers’ professional learning, but its antecedents remain underexplored. In this study, we examined and confirmed the influence of teachers’ job crafting on their engagement with their job. Based on data from 998 teachers, the results of structural equation modelling and bootstrapping confirmed that teachers’ job crafting is critical to their self-efficacy and engagement. The behaviours of increasing structural job resources and optimising job demands were positively related to all four dimensions of teacher engagement and were partially or fully mediated by self-efficacy. The behaviour of increasing challenging job demands was negatively related to social engagement with colleagues, whereas that of decreasing hindering job demands was positively related to social engagement with students and colleagues. Increasing social job resources was only associated with teachers’ social engagement with colleagues. The practical implications of teacher job crafting are discussed, in terms of how it can encourage teachers’ engagement in their work and professional learning.