Teachers’ work engagement across the life span: The role of job and personal resources

With the increasing retirement age, it is of critical importance to understand how teachers of different ages may stay engaged and how resources play a role in this regard. Although studies have linked job and personal resources to engagement (Xanthopoulou et al., 2007, 2009), we add to this literature by examining a moderated mediation model in which age moderates the impact of job resources on self-efficacy and optimism and consequently engagement over time. The results among 648 teachers showed a significant mediation effect of self-efficacy (b = .07, SE = .02, 95% bias corrected bootstrap CI: .03-.12) and optimism (b = .08, SE = .03, CI: .03-.15) on the relationship between job resources and engagement over the course of three weeks after controlling for the baseline measures. We found support for a moderated mediation effect in the sense that job resources had the strongest effect on self-efficacy (index of moderated mediation: .12, SE = .05, 95% CI: .05-.26) and on optimism (index of moderated mediation: .10, SE = .05, 95% CI: .02-.21) for older teachers. Although this group experiences lower levels of self-efficacy and optimism, they thus benefit more from job resources to stay engaged.