The literature suggests that teacher burnout is influenced by the market and hierarchy cultures of school management and teachers’ emotional labor strategies of surface and deep acting. However, studies have suggested that school management cultures and emotional labor strategies may not function independently based on the emotional labor theory. Nevertheless, the literature has paid less attention to the relationship between the school management cultures, emotional labor, and teacher burnout. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between the three variables in China via an online questionnaire survey. After surveying 425 kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers who participated in a professional development program organized by a public university in Beijing, the study found that teacher burnout was positively related to market culture but negatively related to hierarchy culture. Moreover, the impact of the market culture was fully mediated by surface acting while the impact of hierarchy culture was partially mediated by surface acting and deep acting.

This study explores the effects of school climate on the disparities in students’ mathematics achievement, drawing on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 for Shanghai, China. The results of a two-level linear model and quantile regression indicate that three dimensions of school climate (student–teacher relations, disciplinary climate and students’ behaviour) compensate for the effect of family background on students’ mathematics performance, and that student–teacher relations and teacher morale can moderate the effect of family background on mathematics achievement for underachieving students and for low-performing schools, respectively. This shows the protective role of school climate in the relationship between family background and students’ mathematics performance. School climate has a more significant effect in low- and average-performing schools, and for medium-level students and underachievers, compared with high-performing schools and top students, indicating the potential of school climate in narrowing achievement gaps among schools and students. Furthermore, a negative disciplinary climate is the key factor explaining the under-performance of low-performing schools and underachieving students.

The study aims to validate the Chinese version of Personal Accountability Measure (PAM-Ch), which is used to assess the subjective aspect of teacher accountability, by surveying 1146 teachers enrolled in professional development courses offered by a public university in Beijing. The validation process involved two phases. First, the samples were randomly divided into three subgroups—for subgroup 1 (n = 390), exploratory factor analysis was computed; for subgroup 2 (n = 359), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was computed; and, for subgroup 3 (n = 381), a new CFA was performed for cross-validation. Second, Cronbach’s α, composite reliability (CR), average variance extracted (AVE), maximum shared variance (MSV), and average shared variance (ASV) were calculated for testing the reliability and validity. Throughout the process, three measurement models were tested for the adaptation of the PAM-Ch in this study. The results found that Model 2 was the best fit for the data, whose factor loadings ranged from 0.72–0.95 for internal accountability (factor 1) and 0.75–0.89 for external accountability (factor 2). The CRs of these two factors were 0.963 and 0.916, respectively, and the AVE values were 0.790 and 0.645, respectively, indicating that the PAM-Ch is a reliable and valid measure.

Educational decentralisation has been implemented globally. However, few studies have compared the effects of different decentralisation strategies on students’ academic achievement in diverse cultural contexts. Using data from 49 countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, this study attempts to fill this research gap by examining the relationship between three delegation strategies (school autonomy, teacher participation and parental involvement), student achievement and societal culture. Our findings suggest that teacher participation in school management is the most effective educational decentralisation strategy for enhancing students’ mathematics, reading and science performance. This strategy is particularly effective in countries with high power distance. The findings indicate that parental involvement does not have a significant effect on student academic achievement and that its effect is suppressed by a culture of uncertainty avoidance. Furthermore, school autonomy does not have a significant effect on students’ academic achievement in any of the societal cultures examined.