ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1569062
How Mentor Teachers and Emotions Influence Professional Identity and Career Decisions of Preservice Preschool Teachers
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- 2Nanchang Institute of Science and Technology, Nanchang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study examines how mentor teachers and teacher emotions influence the professional identity and career choices of preservice preschool teachers in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China. A quantitative approach was adopted, with data collected from 230 preservice preschool teachers through validated questionnaires. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to examine the relationships between mentor support, teacher emotions, professional identity, and career choice. Results revealed that mentor support significantly enhanced both professional identity and career decisions, with teacher emotions serving as both mediators and moderators in these relationships. These findings underscore the critical role of mentorship and emotional experiences in shaping career readiness and professional identity, highlighting the need for teacher education programs to integrate emotional support within mentorship frameworks to better prepare preservice teachers for their future roles.
Keywords: mentor teachers, Teacher emotions, professional identity, Career Choice, Preservice teachers, Preschool education
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 05 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Abdul Rahman, ABD WAHAB and Qiu. 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: Mohd Nazri Bin Abdul Rahman, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.