Han Jiying, associate professor at the school of Foreign Languages and Literature of Shandong University, has made significant progress in research into university teacher development. The article entitled "Challenge job demands and job resources to university teacher well-being: the mediation of teacher efficacy" was published in Studies in Higher Education, and that entitled "A case study of faculty perceptions of teaching support and teaching efficacy in China: characteristics and relationships" was published in Higher Education. Han Jiying was the first author of these articles.

Both Studies in Higher Education(IF=2.321) and Higher Education(IF=1.937) are leading international journals on higher education studies, and are ranked in Quartile 1 of the impact factor ranking in Education & Educational Research of the Journal Citation Reports.

These two articles are part of Prof. Han Jiying's empirical study on university teacher development and well-being, a project initiated by Shandong Provincial Department of Education with a sample of 2758 university teachers from 25 public institutions of higher education (HEIs) in Shandong Province. The investigation about the relationships between university teachers' perceptions of teaching support and teaching efficacy indicated that teachers' perceptions of university teaching resources and peer support were positively related to teachers' beliefs in their capabilities for successfully influencing students' engagement and learning. Teacher-perceived administrative support was negatively related to their beliefs in the capabilities for course design, technology usage, classroom management and learning assessment among those from provincial ordinary HEIs, but positively related to course design and technology usage among those from vocational institutions. Based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, a leading heuristic framework for broadly conceptualizing occupational psychological health, Prof. Han Jiying further investigated the associations between challenge job demands, job resources, emotional exhaustion and work engagement among university teachers, and examined the mediation effect of teacher efficacy as a personal resource in the JD-R model. The results indicated that challenge job demands were positively related to emotional exhaustion and negatively related to work engagement. Job resources were positively related to work engagement and negatively related to emotional exhaustion. Teacher efficacy mediated the effect of challenge job demands and job resources on work engagement. These results have significant implications for understanding the characteristics of higher education teaching in different types of HEIs, and improving university teachers' beliefs in their teaching capabilities and the level of their perceived well-being.

Han Jiying has received her Ph.D. in Education at the faculty of Education, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research areas include teacher development, teacher motivation, curriculum reform and implementation, foreign language teaching theory and practice. She has a number of articles published in international academic journals including Studies in Higher Education,Higher Education,Educational Psychology,Asia Pacific Education Review,Teaching in Higher Educationetc.

Permanent link of the articles:

https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1594180

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0223-0

Written by: Zhao Ling

Edited by: Che Huiqing