Ameliorating the Psychological Well-Being of Chinese and Iranian Teachers in English Classrooms: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Role of Job Satisfaction and Exemplary Leadership Behaviour

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that the mental condition of teachers has a direct impact on their professional performance. Put another way, teachers with mental or psychological disorders may fail to accomplish their professional responsibilities. Accordingly, factors contributing to teachers' psychological well-being need to be uncovered. To address this necessity, several scholars up to now have scrutinised the predictors of this construct in different educational settings, including language classrooms. Nevertheless, few researchers have addressed the role of personal and job resources in teachers' psychological well-being. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no cross-cultural study to date has examined the role of these resources in English teachers' psychological well-being. To bridge these gaps, the present cross-cultural inquiry investigated the role of two personal and job resources, namely job satisfaction and exemplary leadership behaviour, in Chinese and Iranian English teachers' well-being. In doing so, three self-report scales were distributed among a large sample of Iranian (N = 256) and Chinese (N = 311) teachers. The collected data were statistically analysed through the Amos software (version 29). The results of the analysis showed that both Iranian and Chinese teachers' psychological well-being is closely tied to job satisfaction and exemplary leadership behaviour. Moreover, the outcomes identified that job satisfaction and exemplary leadership behaviour can ameliorate the psychological well-being of Iranian and Chinese teachers in English classrooms. In addition, no meaningful difference was discovered between Chinese and Iranian measurement models regarding the predictive role of job satisfaction and exemplary leadership behaviour. This may be illuminating for all teachers and educational administrators working in EFL and ESL environments.