Principal instructional leadership and teaching enthusiasm among teachers in Shanghai: mediating mechanisms within a control–value theory framework

Abstract

Teaching enthusiasm captures teachers’ positive classroom emotions, their perception of teaching’s intrinsic value, and their engagement in teaching. Drawing on control–value theory, we conceptualized teaching self-efficacy as a control appraisal and teacher collaboration as a value-related resource embedded in the school context. Using 2024 data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) for Shanghai (China), we analyzed a final sample of 1,303 teachers from 205 schools obtained after cleaning the original dataset released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Serial mediation was tested with PROCESS Model 6, and a two-level random-intercept model in Mplus served as a robustness check. Principal instructional leadership was positively associated with teaching enthusiasm. The total indirect effect accounted for 24.99% of the total effect. The strongest indirect effect ran through teaching self-efficacy (17.82%), followed by the serial path through teacher collaboration and teaching self-efficacy (3.99%). The collaboration-only indirect effect was small (3.17%) and marginal, with a bootstrap 95% confidence interval (CI) of [0.0004, 0.0273], and warrants cautious interpretation. These findings suggest that, in the Shanghai school context, teacher collaboration relates to teaching enthusiasm primarily by strengthening teachers’ efficacy beliefs rather than through a direct pathway. The study extends control–value theory from students’ achievement emotions to teachers’ occupational emotions and offers implications for school leadership practice.