A Longitudinal Mediation Analysis of Job Crafting among Chinese Inclusive School Teachers of Students with Special Education Needs

Job crafting is a kind of teachers’ proactive work behavior that is conducive to better accommodating students’ special needs and improving the quality of inclusive education. This study aims to examine the influence of teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education and perceived principals’ leadership on inclusive school teachers’ job crafting and the mediating role of work motivation in the relationships. A total of 666 Beijing primary school teachers whose classrooms had students with special education needs participated in the survey twice within a six-month interval. A series of confirmatory factor analyses were performed to examine the construct validity of all research variables, and longitudinal measurement invariance was examined for work motivation and job crafting. The main hypotheses were examined through longitudinal path analysis. The results showed that attitudes towards inclusive education at time 1 positively predicted both controlled motivation and autonomous motivation at time 2; transformational leadership at time 1 positively predicted autonomous motivation at time 2; autonomous motivation at time 2 positively predicted job crafting at time 2. Moreover, autonomous motivation fully mediated the positive effect of attitudes towards inclusive education on job crafting, and it also fully mediated the positive effect of transformational leadership on job crafting. The findings enrich the existing literature and provide practical implications for inclusive school teachers, principals, and educational authorities.