The Duties and Roles of Education Officials and School Principals in Strengthening and developing work engagement among Teachers: the Results of a Mixed Research

Work engagement is a positive mental state of accomplishment, which is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Teachers' work engagement is defined as the relationship of teachers with their work, and their relationship with school. Engaged teachers have better educational performance, use information to make education more effective, change their skills when they notice that their students are weak in learning, and are more professional in difficulties and in general they obtain better results. The conducted researches in this field indicate that several factors, including personal and job resources, recognition, interactions between teachers, organizational characteristics, leadership and management styles, and supervisor's support have an impact on teachers' work engagement. The present research has been conducted with the aim of identifying the duties and roles of educational officials and school principals in strengthening and developing work engagement among teachers and evaluating the present status of khoramabad schools. This study is a practical research concerning its purpose and methodologically it is a mixed research of explanatory sequential design, which is at first qualitative and then quantitative. The research population of the qualitative section are some famous, experienced and excellent teachers and Principals, who according to parents' and administrators' report can be regarded as engaged in their work. They were chosen by using purposeful and snow-ball sampling and they were interviewed. In quantitative section, research population includes all principals and teachers of the primary educational period (first and second period) and secondary educational period (first and second period) of khoramabad city in the educational year 2016-2017. The number of the sample was 340 of the teachers of different educational periods of khoramabad city, who were selected using stratified random sampling method based on Cochran's formula, and they were examined with researcher-made questionnaire of work engagement. The content validity of the questionnaire was approved by professors and experts in this field and its reliability was authentic (Cronbach's alpha above 0.8). For the analysis of literary texts and interviews open coding method was used in order to formulate teachers' work engagement indices in the qualitative section; and for the statistical analysis of quantitative data, confirmatory factor analysis and T-test (single - sample t) analysis method was used. the findings of the qualitative section of the study indicate that teachers' work engagement include 18 indicators and 5 dimensions: stimulating teachers, performance evaluation procedures, creation of opportunities to enhance learning, democratic management style, school atmosphere. In the qualitative section, confirmatory factor analysisrevealed that the measurement model of latent variable has good fit with observed data. In the quantitative section, According to the results of one-sample t-test, the five factors of the duties and roles of educational officials and school principals in strengthening and developing work engagement among teachers were evaluated as moderate and meaningful. Teachers' work engagement is a complex and multi-dimensional concept that is under the influence of different factors and it needs more identification and investigation.