Given the global challenge of increasing teacher attrition and turnover rates, the exploration of factors and mechanisms that improve teachers’ organizational commitment has become a pivotal topic in educational research. In this context, the present study examines the influence of teachers’ emotional intelligence on their organizational commitment, with a specific inquiry into the mediating role of teachers’ psychological well-being and the moderating role of principal transformational leadership, as informed by the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions and the trait activation theory. We verified this study’s hypotheses based on 768 valid questionnaires collected from Chinese primary and secondary school teachers. The results reveal that teachers’ emotional intelligence can predict their organizational commitment both directly and indirectly through the mediating role of psychological well-being. Additionally, principal transformational leadership amplifies the positive effect of teachers’ emotional intelligence on psychological well-being and, subsequently, organizational commitment. These findings theoretically deepen our understanding of the psychological pathways and the boundary conditions linking teachers’ emotional intelligence to their organizational commitment, while also offering valuable practical implications for building a stable and effective teaching workforce.

With the long-lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has gradually become one of the mainstream learning methods in Chinese universities. The effectiveness of online learning is significantly influenced by learning engagement, and studies into this topic can help learners by providing them with process-based learning support and focused teaching interventions. Based on the online learning environment, this research constructs an online learning engagement analysis model. Additionally, this study explores the relationship between students’ online learning engagement and their online learning performance by taking the Secondary School Geography Curriculum Standards and Textbooks Research, a small-scale private online course (SPOC) of the geography education undergraduate course at Nanjing Normal University, as an example. The findings are as follows: In the cognitive engagement dimension, only “analyze” is significantly positively correlated with learning performance; in the behavioral engagement dimension, the “number of question and answer (Q&A) topic posts,” the “replies to others,” and the “teachers’ replies” are all significantly positively correlated with learning performance. In terms of the emotional engagement dimension, “curiosity” and “pleasure” are positively correlated with learning performance; as for the social engagement dimension, “point centrality” and “intermediary centrality” are positively correlated with learning performance. The findings of this case study reveal that the student’s engagement in higher-order cognitive learning is obviously insufficient. Students’ online learning performance can be enhanced both by behavioral engagement in knowledge reprocessing and positive emotional engagement. Further research should be focused on finding ways to increase students’ enthusiasm for social engagement.

Critical thinking, regarded as an indispensable high-order thinking for pre-service teachers, is of great significance in effective teaching and the cultivation of students’ critical thinking. Given that it has been confirmed by previous studies that the development of pre-service teachers’ critical thinking can be promoted by microteaching, a “Practice-Feedback-Journal” microteaching model was innovatively constructed in this study, aiming to cultivate the critical thinking of pre-service teachers. To investigate the impact of this model, 41 participants from a Chinese normal university were selected for a 12-week microteaching intervention experiment. Subsequently, content analysis of their online reflective journals was conducted using the Nvivo 20 software, based on the critical thinking framework. The findings suggest that the model has the potential to enhance Chinese pre-service teachers’ critical thinking. Evidence indicates that reflective feedback and case-based teaching strategies appear supportive, while cooperative learning also emerged as a promising approach due to its dual simulation of both student and teacher perspectives. As a small-scale exploratory study, this research offers preliminary insights and potential avenues for cultivating higher-order thinking in teacher education.