How does Job Crafting Impact on Career Commitment of Rural Teachers? Ran Sun, 1 Ping Du 2 1. Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, Hubei, China 2. Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the current state of job crafting and career commitment of rural primary teachers and to analyze the relationship between the two variables as well as the influencing mechanisms through a questionnaire survey of 2,217 primary school teachers in Liaoning, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guangxi, and Guizhou. The research findings showed that rural primary teachers exhibited a moderate level of capacity for job crafting and career commitment; that job crafting positively predicted career commitment among rural primary teachers; and that teachers’ self-efficacy and organizational support played mediating and moderating roles respectively in the relationship between the two variables. Best Evidence in Chinese Education 2023; 14(1):1751-1755. Doi: 10.15354/bece.23.ar055 How to Cite: Sun, R., & Du, P. (2023). How does job crafting impact on career commitment of rural teachers? Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 14(1):1751- 1755 Keywords: Job Crafting, Career Commitment, Teachers’ Self-Efficacy, Organizational Support, Person-Job Fit Sun & Du. (Hubei & Beijing, China). Job Crafting and Career Commitment of Rural Teachers. BECE, Vol.14, No.1, 2023 1752 About Authors: Ran Sun, School of Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, Hubei, China. Correspondence to: Ping Du, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. E-mail: duping@bnu.edu.cn Conflict of Interests: None. © 2023 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. mailto:duping@bnu.edu.cn http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Sun & Du. (Hubei & Beijing, China). Job Crafting and Career Commitment of Rural Teachers. BECE, Vol.14, No. 1, 2023 1753 Introduction Career commitment is about an individual’s identification with the value of their career or occupation and an indicator of the extent to which they engage in their current pro- fession (Meyer et al., 1993). Job crafting is an individually driven work design process which gives full play to individuals’ agency in workplace, helping them attain meaning at work and personal development. It is viewed as an important means for teachers to autonomously expand their job resources (Qi, 2016). In the current context of rural edu- cation with limited resources, can teachers actively tap endogenous resources to achieve work goals and improve professional commitment? Can job crafting of Chinese rural teachers positively predict their career commitment? This study aims to present the cur- rent state of job crafting and career commitment among rural teachers and to explore their relations from the perspective of job redesign, utilizing data of rural primary teachers in five provincial administrative regions in China. Data Sources and Selection of Variables The data in this article was derived from a survey in 2020 of compulsory education teachers in five provincial administrative regions: Liaoning, Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guizhou Provinces and Chongqing City. Adopting stratified random sampling, the re- search team first selected one economically less developed county from each region, and then picked one moderately developed township and one underdeveloped township from each county. After that, one demonstration primary school and two ordinary pri- mary schools from each county, and one central primary school, one village primary school, and two teaching sites from each of the two townships were included in the in- vestigation; a total of 2217 primary teachers were surveyed. The independent variable in this study was teacher job crafting, measured by the job crafting scale developed by Slemp and Vella-Rodrick (2013). Teacher career commitment was the dependent variable, measured by the primary and secondary teachers’ career commitment scale created by Li (2001). Teacher self-efficacy was the mediator, measured by Yu et al.’s (1995) simplified version of the general self-efficacy scale, while teacher organizational support was measured by the primary teachers’ per- ception of organizational support scale created by the research team according to the actual educational experience of primary teachers. Research Findings Common Method Biases Test The test results showed that there were seven principal factors that have a greater-than-1 characteristic root and that the variance explained by the top factor was 36.4%, which was less than the critical value of 40%. That indicated that the common method biases were not significant. Sun & Du. (Hubei & Beijing, China). Job Crafting and Career Commitment of Rural Teachers. BECE, Vol.14, No. 1, 2023 1754 Descriptive Statistics of Variables and Relevant Anal- yses (i) The mean value of job crafting of rural teachers was 3.87, with the mean of their cognitive crafting being the highest (4.04) and that of their relationship crafting being the lowest (3.76), both of which were slightly higher than the critical value of 3. The analysis results showed there was no significant difference in job crafting performance between rural and urban primary teachers. (ii) The mean value of career commitment of rural teachers was 3.17, with the mean of their normative commitment being the highest (3.32) and their continuance commitment being the lowest (2.92), both of which were above the critical value of 2, but slightly lower than the level of career commitment among urban teachers. (iii) The self-efficacy of rural teachers was similar to that of ur- ban teachers, and their perception of organizational support was slightly lower than that of the latter, with both being above the critical value of 2. Verification of Hypotheses This study constructed structural equation models based on samples of urban and rural teachers to verify hypotheses 1 and 2. The structural equation model based on the sam- ple of rural teachers resulted in a satisfactory goodness of fit: RMSEA = 0 06, CFI = 0. 90, TLI = 0. 90, SRMR = 0. 06; Job crafting of rural primary teachers could significant- ly and positively predict their career commitment, and their self-efficacy posed a medi- ating effect on the relation between the two variables. Thus, H1 and H2 were confirmed. The study also constructed latent moderation models based on samples of urban and rural teacher to verify hypothesis 3. The results demonstrated that both teachers’ job crafting and perception of organizational support significantly and positively predict career commitment, with the former having a greater effect than the latter. Conclusions The rural primary teachers sampled exhibit a moderate level of capacity for job crafting. Job crafting has the potential of enhancing career commitment of rural primary teachers. The effect of teacher job crafting on career commitment is mediated by teacher self- efficacy. Organizational support significantly and positively moderates the positive re- lationship between job crafting and career commitment of rural primary teachers. References Li, X. (2001). The Development of a Primary and Secondary Teacher Career Commitment Questionnaire (master’s thesis). Central Chi- na Normal University. 2001. Meyer, J. P., Allen, N. J., & Smith, C. A. (1993). Commitment to organizations and occupa- tions: Extension and test of a three- component conceptualization. Journal of Ap- Sun & Du. (Hubei & Beijing, China). Job Crafting and Career Commitment of Rural Teachers. BECE, Vol.14, No. 1, 2023 1755 plied Psychology, 78(4):538-551. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.78.4.538 Qi, Y. J., Wu, X. C., & Wang, X. L. (2016). A cross-lagged regression analysis of job craft- ing and work engagement of primary and secondary teachers. Chinese Journal of Clini- cal Psychology, 2016(5):5. Slemp, G. R., & Vella-Brodrick, D. A. (2013). The job crafting questionnaire: A new scale to measure the extent to which employees engage in job crafting. International Journal of Wellbeing, 3(2):126-146. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v3i2.1 Yu, G. L., Xin, T., & Shen, J. L. (1995). Teachers’ instruction efficacy: The structure and influ- encing factors. Journal of Psychology, 27(2):159-166. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02006258 The Chinese version of this article has been published in Educational Research and Experiment, 2023, 2023(02): 92-101. The English version has been authorized for being publication in BECE by the author(s) and the Chinese journal. 孙冉, 杜屏. (2023). 乡村教师工作重塑对职业承诺的影响及其机制. 教育研究与实验, 2023, 2023(2):92-101. Received: 20 April 2023 Revised: 03 May 2023 Accepted: 15May 2023 https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.78.4.538 https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v3i2.1 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02006258 AR2-PingDu-BECE_TitleMay_2023 AR2-PingDu-BECE_MaintextMay2023