Improving teacher career satisfaction through distributed leadership in China: The parallel mediation of teacher empowerment and organizational commitment

Based on a survey of 522 primary and secondary school teachers in mainland China, the study explored the effect of distributed leadership on teacher career satisfaction, and examined the mediation of teacher empowerment and organizational commitment using structural equation modeling. It was found that the implementation of distributed leadership could exert a significant positive impact on teacher career satisfaction in the Chinese cultural context. In addition, distributed leadership could positively influence career satisfaction indirectly through the full mediation of teacher empowerment and organizational commitment, and teacher empowerment had a greater mediating effect than organizational commitment.