From leadership research to district action: How transformational leadership reduces teachers’ role stress: dual mediation of affective commitment and job satisfaction

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Introduction Teacher stress is a growing concern in educational settings worldwide. Grounded in the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study investigates how principals’ transformational leadership influences role stress among primary and secondary school teachers. It particularly focuses on the mediating roles of affective commitment and job satisfaction. Methods A quantitative survey was conducted among 433 teachers in China. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and the PROCESS macro to explore both direct and indirect effects of transformational leadership on teacher role stress. Results Transformational leadership was found to significantly reduce teachers’ role stress (direct effect = −0.185, 95% CI = [−0.277, −0.093]). Additionally, both affective commitment and job satisfaction served as significant mediators. Affective commitment exerted the strongest individual mediating effect (standardized indirect effect = −0.045, 95% CI = [−0.072, −0.021]), while the sequential mediation pathway involving both variables also reached statistical significance (standardized indirect effect = −0.018, 95% CI = [−0.031, −0.008]). Discussion The study found that transformational leadership reduces teachers’ role stress both directly and indirectly through affective commitment and job satisfaction. These results extend the application of COR theory by identifying emotional and motivational factors as key mediators. The findings also offer practical implications for enhancing teacher well-being through school leadership development.

Study methods

This study aims to examine the direct and indirect effects of principals’ transformational leadership on teachers’ role stress, with a particular focus on the mediating roles of affective commitment and job satisfaction. A cross-sectional survey design was employed, and data were collected using a structured questionnaire to test the proposed hypotheses. Additionally, the Bootstrap method with 5,000 resamples was used to test the mediating effects of affective commitment and job satisfaction in the relationship between transformational leadership and role stress, ensuring the robustness of the estimation results.

Limitations

First, this study adopted a cross-sectional design, which limits the ability to establish causal relationships. Future studies could employ a longitudinal research design to better capture the long-term effects of transformational leadership on teachers’ role stress and provide more robust evidence for causality.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Map one recurring source of staff workload with voluntary staff input. Agree one reversible schedule, support or task-allocation change and name its owner. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Compare workload hours, a consistent voluntary wellbeing measure, absence and retention intentions with the pre-pilot baseline. Report response rates and avoid causal claims from an uncontrolled comparison. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Ping Yong; Junhui Zhang. How transformational leadership reduces teachers’ role stress: dual mediation of affective commitment and job satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology (2025-08-07). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1634303

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.