ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1634303
This article is part of the Research TopicEducator Burnout – Improving the Understanding of Challenges and Advancing Insights for Interventions and PreventionView all articles
How Transformational Leadership Reduces Teachers' Role Stress: Dual Mediation of Affective Commitment and Job Satisfaction Introduction: Teacher stress is a growing concern in educational settings worldwide. Grounded in the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study investigates how principals' transformational leadership influences role stress among primary and secondary school teachers. It particularly focuses on the mediating roles of affective commitment and job satisfaction
Provisionally accepted
- 1Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China
- 2Army Medical University, Chongqing, China
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Methods: A quantitative survey was conducted among 433 teachers in China. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and the PROCESS macro to explore both direct and indirect effects of transformational leadership on teacher role stress.Results: Transformational leadership was found to significantly reduce teachers'role stress (direct effect = -0.185, 95% CI = [-0.277, -0.093]). Additionally, both affective commitment and job satisfaction served as significant mediators. Affective commitment exerted the strongest individual mediating effect (standardized indirect effect = -0.045, 95% CI = [-0.072, -0.021]), while the sequential mediation pathway involving both variables also reached statistical significance (standardized indirect effect = -0.018, 95% CI = [-0.031, -0.008]).The study found that transformational leadership reduces teachers'role stress both directly and indirectly through affective commitment and job satisfaction. These results extend the application of COR theory by identifying emotional and motivational factors as key mediators. The findings also offer practical implications for enhancing teacher well-being through school leadership development.
Keywords: Transformational leadership, role stress, Affective commitment, Job Satisfaction, primary and secondary school teachers
Received: 24 May 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 YONG and Zhang. 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: Junhui Zhang, Army Medical University, Chongqing, China
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