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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1446257
This article is part of the Research Topic Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Chinese Higher Education: Emerging Challenges View all 16 articles
The Predictive Power of Teaching Self-Efficacy and Emotion Regulation on Work Engagement for EFL Teachers in Higher Education
Provisionally accepted- 1 Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, China
- 2 School of Basic Medical, Fourth Military Medical University,, Xi'an, China
Employing quantitative approach, this study investigated the role of emotion regulation and teaching self-efficacy as predictors of work engagement among Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) teachers in Chinese higher education. To address this goal, three previously validated questionnaires related to each of the variables were distributed among Chinese college EFL teachers with various experiences and academic degrees, and a sample of 495 completed the questionnaire. Using correlational analyses, the results demonstrated strong association between emotion regulation, teaching self-efficacy and work engagement. To further probe the predictive power of teaching self-efficacy and emotion regulation on work engagement, structural equation modelling (SEM) was performed and it was revealed that Chinese college EFL teachers' work engagement was predicted significantly and favorably by their teaching self-efficacy while teacher emotion does not show obvious contributing power towards work engagement in Chinese higher education EFL context. The findings reflect unique features of Chinese college EFL teachers' work engagement and provide useful implications for college EFL teachers and educational authorities in that it is suggested more time and energy should be invested in facilitating teachers with their psychological and emotional well-being along with pedagogical concerns.
Keywords: EFL, Teaching self-efficacy, Emotion Regulation, work engagement, higher education
Received: 01 Oct 2024; Accepted: 17 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, He and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lin He, Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, China
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