The Mediating Role of Career Motivation in the Relationship between Stress Coping Strategies and Social-Emotional Competence in Primary Teachers

This research was conducted with the aim of mediating the role of job motivation in the relationship between stress coping strategies and social-emotional competence in primary teachers. The cross-sectional research method is correlational. The statistical population of the present study was made up of all the teachers who were teaching in the elementary school of Tehran in 1400-1401, and among them, 350 people were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling method. In this research, tools of coping strategies (Lazarus and Folkman, 1985), job motivation (Robinson, 2004) and social-emotional competence (Boyatzis, 2007) were used, all of which had acceptable validity and reliability. In order to analyze the data, SPSS-V23 and Lisrel-V7.8 software were used. In order to respond to the research hypotheses, structural equation modeling was used. The research findings showed that the model has a good fit. The results showed that strategies to deal with stress have a direct effect on teachers' social-emotional competencies (p<0.05). Strategies to deal with stress have an indirect effect on primary teachers' job motivation (p<0.05). Career motivation has an indirect effect on social-emotional competencies of elementary teachers (p<0.05). Also, the results showed that the indirect effect of stress coping strategies with social-emotional competencies through the mediation of job motivation in primary teachers was confirmed with 95% confidence. Therefore, paying attention to the mentioned variables helps researchers and therapists in prevention and designing more suitable treatments.Key words: social-emotional competence, strategies to deal with stress, job motivation