The Mediating Role of Trust in the Relationship between Principal Leadership and Teachers’ Job and Teaching Satisfaction: Evidence from Hong Kong’s 2022 PISA Data
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Abstract
This study employed a survey research design utilizing data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The purposes of this study were: 1) to validate the proposed structural equation model of teachers’ job and teaching satisfaction 2) to analyze the direct and indirect effects of principal leadership on teachers’ job and teaching satisfaction, and 3) to investigate the mediating role of teachers’ trust in the relationship between principal leadership and teacher satisfaction. The sample consisted of 2,335 teachers from 155 schools, derived from the two-stage sampling design employed in the PISA framework. The instrument used was a 19-item Likert-scale questionnaire, with an overall reliability coefficient of 0.885. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and bootstrapping techniques to test the significance of mediation effects. The results revealed that the proposed model demonstrated a good fit with the empirical data. Principal leadership had a significant direct effect on teachers’ trust ( = 0.50). Teachers’ trust exerted significant positive effects on job satisfaction (
= 0.76) and teaching satisfaction (
= 0.43). However, principal leadership had no significant direct effects on either dimension of satisfaction. Instead, it exerted indirect effects through trust on job satisfaction (
= 0.38) and teaching satisfaction (
= 0.21), both of which were statistically significant at the 0.05 level.
In conclusion, teachers’ trust served as a full mediator in the relationship between principal leadership and teachers’ satisfaction. The findings highlight the pivotal role of trust in educational organizations, particularly in Hong Kong’s highly competitive and hierarchically structured school system.
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