Background: Job burnout has become a widespread phenomenon in school settings. However, little is known about the mental health condition of the growing cohort of generalist teachers in rural primary schools. Drawing on the job demands–resource model and social exchange theory, this study examines the correlation between job burnout and job satisfaction through perceived organizational support and work engagement. Methods: We recruited 639 Chinese generalist teachers in rural primary schools as the study subjects and developed a serial mediation model to assess the hypothesized construct. The data acquired online via Wenjuanxing Software were confirmed as valid and analyzed with SPSS and SmartPLS. Results: The participants scored above the median in perceived organizational support, work engagement, and job satisfaction, and had scores close to the median for job burnout. Statistically significant differences among the investigated variables were found in gender, age, experience, and degree. Job burnout was negatively predictive of perceived organizational support, work engagement, and job satisfaction (each p = 0.000). Perceived organizational support mediated the association between job burnout and work engagement (p = 0.000) and the connection between job burnout and job satisfaction (p = 0.000), while work engagement mediated the association between job burnout and job satisfaction (p = 0.000) and the association between perceived organizational support and job satisfaction (p = 0.000). Conclusions: Perceived organizational support and work engagement as two sequential mediators buffered the detrimental impact of job burnout on job satisfaction among Chinese generalist teachers in rural primary schools. Targeted strategies should be implemented to diminish generalist teachers’ feelings of burnout, being unsupported by organizations, disengagement at work, and dissatisfaction with the job.

This article aims to examine the employment prospects of graduates from Sino-foreign cooperative universities (SFCUs) compared with those from local Chinese universities. Drawing on the annual employment quality reports released by six SFCUs, the findings indicated that SFCU graduates had distinct advantages in terms of both further study and direct employment. Specifically, the overall employment rate reached 95.84%; over half of the graduates pursued further study abroad in world-class foreign universities, close to one-third continued further studies in elite domestic universities, and one-sixth were employed by transnational or local large organizations. These results suggest that SFCU graduates were equipped with distinct competitive advantages for employment, further supported by an affluent family background and the high-quality requirement for admission. Meanwhile, the findings also raise concerns about brain drain, economic flows, overeducation, reduced entrepreneurial passion, and unemployment dilemma for graduates from lesser known SFCUs.

Background: University students with a vocational pathway face greater cultural, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral challenges during the transition process than their counterparts with an academic route. Method: This study examined the predictive effect of bicultural identity integration, self-esteem, academic resilience, and interaction anxiousness on school belonging using a quantitative approach with 326 Chinese vocational pathway university student participants. Result: The participants had high levels of cultural adaptability, self-esteem, academic resilience, and school belonging, but they also displayed moderate interaction anxiousness. Bicultural identity integration (B = 0.24; p < 0.001), self-esteem (B = 0.35; p < 0.001), and academic resilience (B = 0.25; p < 0.001) significantly positively predicted school belonging, while interaction anxiousness (B = −0.17; p < 0.01) negatively predicted school belonging. Conclusions: Bicultural identity integration, self-esteem, academic resilience, and interaction anxiousness were crucial determinants of school belonging among Chinese university students with vocational qualifications. Effective measures should be initiated to boost their feelings of being recognized, respected, and connected to the university community.

We investigated the moderating role of employment stress in the relationship between proactive personality and career decision-making self-efficacy among recent Chinese graduates during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main results are as follows: (a) proactive personality positively predicted career decision-making self-efficacy, (b) employment stress was negatively related to proactive personality and career decision-making self-efficacy, and (c) employment stress significantly and negatively moderated the effect of proactive personality on career decision-making self-efficacy, meaning that the moderating effect was stronger at a lower level of employment stress. The results indicate that students graduating during the COVID-19 pandemic are more prone to suffering from complex career decisionmaking processes exacerbated by a challenging and changing labor market. Our findings suggest that graduates should secure flexible employment options and that officials, staff, and managers in governments, universities, and industries should work together to enhance graduates' career decision-making self-efficacy and assist them in achieving their early career aspirations by alleviating internal and external employment pressure.

Grounded on the social exchange theory (SET), social cognitive theory (SCT), and self-determination theory (SDT), this study aims to explore the mediating role of self-efficacy (SE) and work engagement (WE) on the effect of social support (SS) on job satisfaction (JS) among Chinese ethnic minority kindergarten teachers (KTs). The results show that: (1) SS has a directly significant effect on JS; (2) WE mediates the relationship between SS and JS; and (3) SE mediates the relationship between SS and WE. Although the mediation of SE on the relationship between SS and JS is not found, the posited multiple mediations of SE and WE on the relationship between SS and JS are totally accepted. The results reveal that SS mainland Chinese ethnic minority KTs received can not only have a direct effect on JS but also have an indirect impact through the one-path mediating role of WE and the chain mediating role of SE and WE. The results suggest that governments, supervisors, and sponsors should work together to provide ethnic minority KTs with more prioritized SS from both cultural psychology and financial material and opportunities for facilitating professional knowledge and skills in order to enhance their SE, inspire their WE, and eventually accumulate their JS.

We examined the correlations between personality and career decision-making self-efficacy (CDMSE) of university students from poor rural areas in China from an educational equity perspective. The results showed that female (vs. male) students were more neurotic, senior (vs. younger) students were more agreeable, and social science students were more neurotic than those in other disciplines. The results also revealed that differences in the total CDMSE were nonsignificant, but there was a gender difference in accurate self-appraisal and a difference by year of study in gathering information. There was a positive correlation between conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and extraversion, and CDMSE, and a negative correlation between neuroticism and CDMSE. The 5 personality traits, except for agreeableness, played a crucial role in predicting CDMSE. The results suggest that officials and staff of governments, universities, and industries should work together to develop proactive personality traits of students from poor rural areas in China, facilitate their CDMSE, and help them achieve their employment aspirations, thereby promoting educational equity.