Responsible leadership, teacher recognition, and teacher emotional well-being: an investigation of gender differences

ABSTRACTTeacher emotional well-being is under challenges. Although previous research has revealed the positive effects of responsible leadership in education fields, its influence on teacher emotional well-being has remained underdeveloped. Therefore, this study aimed to fill the research gap by examining the direct effect of responsible leadership on teacher emotional well-being and testing the mediation effects of teacher recognition and gender difference. By surveying a total of 486 teacher responses working in public primary and secondary schools in China, the study revealed that responsible leadership is associated with teacher emotional well-being significantly through the mediation effect of recognition for social esteem and a significant gender difference among these relationships. The findings and implications are discussed further.KEYWORDS: Responsible leadershipteacher recognitionteacher emotional well-beinggender difference Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Capital University of Economics and Business under the fundamental research funds of Beijing Municipal Universities [number XRZ2022012]