Relationships among teachers’ emotional competences, emotional labour strategies and self-efficacy in moral and character education: A Hong Kong case

Abstract

Teachers’ emotions and well-being are critical not only for their personal and professional development but also for facilitating holistic development of students. With increasing risks and uncertainties from sociopolitical changes and the global pandemic, teachers are facing tremendous stress which has affected their self-efficacy. This cross-sectional study of 1614 teachers from 50 primary schools in Hong Kong investigates how teachers’ perception of emotional competences and their emotional labour strategies relate to their self-efficacy in moral and character education via confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. The results reveal that both teachers’ emotional competences and teachers’ emotional labour strategies are positively associated with teachers’ self-efficacy in moral and character education. Understanding the relationships among emotional competences, emotional labour strategies and teachers' self-efficacy may be the first step in intervention implementation and effective policy development that could improve teachers’ self-efficacy in their provision of moral and character education.