关键词: 师范生, 职业使命感, 学业投入, SCCT

Abstract: More recently, work engagement is expanded into the field of study, and the concept of study engagement is proposed. It was maintained that from a psychological point of view, students’ core activities can be considered as ‘work’. Namely, like employees, students are involved in structured, coercive activities (e.g., doing assignments, attending class) that are directed toward a specific goal (e.g., passing exams, acquiring a degree). Hence, students could also experience engagement regarding their studies. Analogous to work engagement, study engagement is characterized by feeling vigorous, being dedicated to one’s studies, and being absorbed in study-related tasks. Empirical studies found study engagement has positive effects on academic achievement, study strategies and career competencies. Given the importance of study engagement, its antecedents come into the view of scholars. In the extant literature, the antecedents studied could be divided into three categories: demographic factors, individual characteristics and environmental factors. Career calling is a transcendent summons, experienced as originating beyond the self, to approach a particular life role in a manner oriented toward demonstrating or deriving a sense of purpose or meaningfulness and that holds other-oriented values and goals as primary sources of motivation. Calling is closely related to the population of teacher. But in the extant literature about engagement, career calling is ignored. Drawing on the social cognitive career theory, we examined the effects of career calling on study engagement of normal university students. To reduce common method bias, three-wave investigation procedure was carried out. In total, 476 questionnaires were initially distributed to normal university students recruited from a normal university located in central China. The final sample consisted of 436 valid questionnaires, 21.56% were freshmen (n= 94), 19.54% were sophomores (n= 84), 17.29% were juniors (n= 119), 31.19% were seniors (n= 136). On average, the participants were 22.01 years old (SD=1.23). Most of the participants were females (n=310, 71.10%). The instruments used in this study included 12-Career Calling which measured career calling, Professional Identity Scale for Normal Students which measured career outcome expectations and career self-efficacy, Career Satisfaction which overall assessed satisfaction with teaching profession, Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Student which assessed personal engagement in the study-related tasks. The SEM analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results showed: (1) career calling positively and significantly predicted study engagement, (2) career outcome expectations and career self-efficacy partially mediated the positively relationship between career calling and study engagement, and (3) career calling could predict career satisfaction which positively related to study engagement. But, the positive relationship between career calling and career satisfaction was fully mediated by career outcome expectations and career self-efficacy. In the end, the practical implications and research limitations are discussed.

Key words: normal university students, career calling, study engagement, SCCT