Modeling Elementary Teachers' Work Engagement Based on Job Crafting and Emotional Creativity: The Mediating Role of Critical Thinking

Introduction

Teacher work engagement is a positive psychological state in which teachers approach their professional duties with energy, dedication, and absorption. In school settings, engagement is not merely a personal feeling; it is related to instructional persistence, classroom presence, and willingness to invest cognitive and emotional resources in students. The construct has been treated in organizational psychology as a positive indicator of work-related well-being and as conceptually distinct from burnout, job involvement, and ordinary job satisfaction.

The present study examined whether elementary teachers' work engagement could be modeled through two antecedent variables: job crafting and emotional creativity. It also tested whether critical thinking functioned as a mediating mechanism. The construct is referred to consistently as job crafting throughout this manuscript to avoid conceptual inconsistency. In this context, job crafting denotes teachers' active modification of task, relational, and cognitive aspects of their work. This model is theoretically plausible. Teachers who actively shape aspects of their work may gain more autonomy, meaning, and relational resources. Teachers who can generate original and appropriate emotional responses may be more capable of maintaining constructive classroom climates. However, neither job crafting nor emotional creativity necessarily translates automatically into engagement. Both may depend on a cognitive mechanism that allows teachers to evaluate situations, interpret constraints, compare alternatives, and select effective responses. Critical thinking provides such a mechanism.

The study contributes to teacher-engagement research in three ways. First, it applies structural equation modeling to examine direct and indirect associations in a single model. Second, it places critical thinking at the center of the mechanism linking work-design and emotional factors to engagement. Third, it examines these associations in elementary teachers, a group whose engagement is important for school functioning and instructional quality.

Theoretical Background and Hypotheses

Work engagement was operationalized with the engagement framework associated with Schaufeli, Salanova, and colleagues, in which engagement is commonly represented by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Vigor refers to energy and resilience during work; dedication refers to enthusiasm, significance, and involvement; and absorption refers to focused immersion in work. These dimensions are appropriate for teaching because teachers must sustain energy, identify meaning in instructional activity, and remain cognitively present during classroom interaction.

Job crafting refers to employee-initiated changes in tasks, relationships, or the cognitive meaning of work. In educational settings, teachers may craft their jobs by modifying classroom activities, expanding professional relationships, reframing the meaning of teaching tasks, or seeking more constructive forms of interaction with students and colleagues. Such changes can increase the perceived fit between the person and the job. In the present model, job crafting was expected to predict work engagement directly and to predict critical thinking because meaningful work adaptation requires evaluation, planning, and reflective comparison of possible work strategies.

Emotional creativity refers to the capacity to experience and express emotions in ways that are original, effective, and authentic. In the classroom, emotional creativity is relevant because teachers frequently face unpredictable emotional situations, including student conflict, frustration, anxiety, motivation problems, and interpersonal tension. A teacher with stronger emotional creativity may respond to these situations with more flexible emotional strategies rather than relying on rigid reactions.

Critical thinking refers to purposeful, self-regulated judgment involving analysis, inference, evaluation, and reasoning. For teachers, it is not only an academic skill; it is a practical professional competence. Teachers use critical thinking when they diagnose classroom problems, assess students' needs, interpret institutional expectations, and choose pedagogical responses. Within the proposed model, critical thinking was expected to be a proximal predictor of work engagement.

Five direct hypotheses and two mediation hypotheses were considered. The direct hypotheses were that job crafting, emotional creativity, and critical thinking would each be positively associated with work engagement, and that job crafting and emotional creativity would each be positively associated with critical thinking. The mediation hypotheses were that critical thinking would mediate the relationship between job crafting and work engagement and the relationship between emotional creativity and work engagement.

Method

Design

The study used an applied, descriptive-correlational survey design. Structural equation modeling was selected because the research question involved simultaneous testing of several direct and indirect relationships among latent psychological and occupational constructs. The design was cross-sectional; therefore, the reported path coefficients are interpreted as statistical associations consistent with the proposed theoretical model, not as definitive evidence of causal effects.

Participants and Sampling

The statistical population consisted of all elementary school teachers in Barkhar, Iran. According to the reported population size, 270 elementary teachers were eligible. Because the population was limited, the study used census sampling and included all available members of the population as the analytic sample. No subgroup analyses are reported because demographic subgroup data were not available in the manuscript records used for this report.

Measures

Data were collected using standardized self-report questionnaires. Emotional creativity was assessed with the Emotional Creativity Questionnaire attributed to Averill and included preparedness, novelty, effectiveness, and authenticity. Job crafting was assessed with the scale attributed to Slemp and Vella-Brodrick and covered task, cognitive, and relational dimensions. Critical thinking was assessed with the California Critical Thinking framework attributed to Facione and included evaluation, inference, analysis, deductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning. Work engagement was assessed with the engagement scale attributed to Salanova and Schaufeli and included vigor, absorption, and dedication.

The present report is limited by the absence of detailed measurement-model indices such as Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability, average variance extracted, discriminant validity statistics, and complete item-retention decisions. This limitation is acknowledged explicitly, and no unreported psychometric statistics are added.

Data Analysis

SPSS was used to calculate descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, minimum and maximum scores, score ranges, and sample size. SmartPLS 3 was used to estimate the structural model and test path coefficients. A two-tailed significance threshold of .05 was used, with t values greater than 1.96 interpreted as statistically significant. Values displayed as .000 in the software output were reported in the manuscript as p < .001 according to standard statistical-reporting practice.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

The study included 270 teachers for all four measured variables. Emotional creativity had a mean score of 63.62 with a standard deviation of 16.59, a minimum of 23, a maximum of 87, and a range of 64. Critical thinking had a mean score of 55.38 with a standard deviation of 12.15, a minimum of 21, a maximum of 82, and a range of 61. Job crafting had a mean score of 42.87 with a standard deviation of 9.35, a minimum of 17, a maximum of 58, and a range of 41. Work engagement had a mean score of 22.79 with a standard deviation of 8.54, a minimum of 10, a maximum of 32, and a range of 22. These descriptive statistics are summarized in Table 1.

Structural Model and Direct Effects

As shown in Figures 2-4 and summarized in Table 2, all five direct paths in the structural model were statistically significant and positive. The strongest direct association was observed for critical thinking predicting work engagement (beta = 0.623, SE = 0.043, t = 14.366, p < .001). Job crafting had a positive direct association with work engagement (beta = 0.138, SE = 0.050, t = 2.762, p = .006), and emotional creativity had a positive direct association with work engagement (beta = 0.191, SE = 0.048, t = 3.944, p < .001).

The predictors of critical thinking were also significant. Job crafting was positively associated with critical thinking (beta = 0.478, SE = 0.056, t = 8.566, p < .001), and emotional creativity was positively associated with critical thinking (beta = 0.384, SE = 0.058, t = 6.601, p < .001). Figure 2 presents standardized coefficients, Figure 3 presents significance values, and Figure 4 presents t values for the structural model.

Mediation Effects

As summarized in Table 3, the mediation results supported the central role of critical thinking. The indirect effect of emotional creativity on work engagement through critical thinking was beta = 0.239 and was reported as statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. The indirect effect of job crafting on work engagement through critical thinking was beta = 0.298 and was also statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. Because full bootstrapped confidence intervals, total effects, and VAF statistics were not available, the mediation findings are interpreted cautiously as evidence of statistically supported indirect associations.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to test a structural model in which elementary teachers' work engagement was associated with job crafting and emotional creativity, with critical thinking serving as a mediator. The results supported all proposed direct and indirect paths. The strongest direct path was from critical thinking to work engagement. This finding is theoretically coherent: teachers who evaluate problems systematically, infer causes, compare possible responses, and reason through classroom and organizational challenges may be more capable of maintaining a sense of professional agency.

The positive direct association between job crafting and work engagement is consistent with the idea that teachers are not passive recipients of job descriptions. Even in regulated school systems, teachers can shape tasks, relationships, and interpretations of work. Task crafting may include modifying learning activities or classroom routines. Relational crafting may include strengthening collaboration with colleagues or students. Cognitive crafting may include reframing teaching as meaningful developmental work.

The positive association between job crafting and critical thinking was one of the stronger paths in the model. This result indicates that job crafting may have a cognitive dimension. Teachers who adjust tasks or relationships must identify constraints, analyze alternatives, and judge the likely consequences of changes. In this sense, job crafting may function as an applied context for critical thinking. Conversely, teachers with stronger critical thinking may be better able to engage in effective job crafting because they can distinguish useful work adaptation from superficial or unrealistic changes.

Emotional creativity also showed significant direct and indirect associations with work engagement. Teaching includes many emotional events, including classroom discipline, student motivation, parent communication, and colleague interaction. A teacher who can generate flexible, authentic, and constructive emotional responses may be less likely to rely on rigid reactions. However, the indirect path through critical thinking suggests that emotional creativity is more useful when accompanied by reflective judgment about when, how, and why a particular emotional response is appropriate.

The mediation findings suggest that critical thinking is a relevant explanatory pathway between job crafting, emotional creativity, and work engagement. The indirect effect for job crafting was larger than the indirect effect for emotional creativity, indicating that critical thinking may be especially relevant when teachers actively reshape their work. Because the design was cross-sectional and based on self-report questionnaires, the findings should not be interpreted as causal proof. Longitudinal and intervention studies are needed to clarify directionality.

Practical Implications

The findings suggest that school leaders may benefit from treating teacher engagement as a combined work-design, emotional, and cognitive issue. Schools can support constructive job crafting by giving teachers reasonable autonomy in instructional methods, classroom routines, peer collaboration, and professional development choices. This does not mean removing accountability; rather, it means allowing teachers to adapt their work in ways that fit students' needs and teachers' professional strengths.

Professional development programs may also include critical thinking as a practical teaching competence. Training can focus on problem analysis, evidence-informed decision making, reflective practice, and evaluation of alternative classroom strategies. Emotional creativity should also be recognized as part of teachers' professional competence, especially when connected with ethical classroom judgment and reflective decision making.

Limitations and Future Research

Several limitations should be noted. First, the study was cross-sectional; therefore, the results support association and mediation within a theoretical model but cannot establish temporal or causal order. Future research should use longitudinal designs to examine whether job crafting and emotional creativity predict later critical thinking and engagement.

Second, all variables were measured through self-report questionnaires, which creates a risk of common-method bias because the same source and method were used for predictors, mediator, and outcome. Future studies should combine self-report data with peer ratings, supervisor assessments, classroom observations, or administrative indicators.

Third, demographic information and subgroup analyses were not available in the present report. Future studies should examine whether the model differs by gender, teaching experience, school location, employment status, or grade level. Fourth, detailed measurement-model statistics should be reported in future studies, including Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability, average variance extracted, discriminant validity, indicator loadings, collinearity diagnostics, and the bootstrap procedure used for indirect effects. Fifth, because the study was conducted in one city, generalization to other regions should be made cautiously.

Conclusion

This study tested a structural model of elementary teachers' work engagement based on job crafting and emotional creativity, with critical thinking as a mediator. All direct paths were positive and statistically significant. Critical thinking was the strongest direct predictor of work engagement and mediated both the job crafting-work engagement relationship and the emotional creativity-work engagement relationship. The findings suggest that teacher engagement is associated not only with flexible work design and emotional creativity, but also with the cognitive capacity to analyze, evaluate, and respond effectively to professional challenges. Because the study was cross-sectional, the findings should be interpreted as model-supported associations rather than causal effects.

Declarations

Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate

The study followed standard ethical principles for educational survey research involving human participants. Participation was voluntary, and participants were informed about the purpose of the study, confidentiality of responses, aggregate reporting of data, and their right to withdraw. Completion of the questionnaire was treated as informed consent. No identifiable personal information is reported in the manuscript.

Consent for Publication

Not applicable. The manuscript reports aggregate survey results and does not contain identifiable individual information.

Availability of Data and Materials

The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request and subject to ethical and institutional restrictions.

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Authors' Contributions

H.M.K. contributed to conceptualization, investigation, and manuscript preparation. R.B.B. contributed to literature review, data organization, and methodological support. H.A. contributed to methodological review, interpretation of findings, and manuscript editing. R.R.M. supervised the study, contributed to project administration, and reviewed the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Artificial Intelligence Use Statement

AI-assisted language editing was used during preparation of the English manuscript to improve grammar, clarity, formatting, and presentation. No AI tool was used to generate empirical data, fabricate results, or conduct statistical analysis. The authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript and remain fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the cooperation of the elementary teachers and educational administrators in Barkhar who supported the implementation of the study.