The impact of perceived organizational support on professional identity in Chinese kindergarten teachers: the mediating and moderating roles of achievement goal orientations and job stress.

Introduction: Kindergarten teachers often experience significant job stress and have increasingly high turnover rates. Professional identity is associated with burnout and turnover intention, underscoring the importance of exploring the key factors that enhance it in teachers. Professional identity development is influenced by the working environment and constrained by teachers' individual factors, such as achievement goal orientations and job stress. However, limited number of studies have investigated the mediating role of achievement goal orientation in the relationship between organizational support and professional identity. Therefore, this study focused on the impact of perceived organizational support on kindergarten teachers' professional identities and examined the mediating role of their achievement goals and moderating role of job stress. Methods: This study conducted a questionnaire survey of 1,475 kindergarten teachers in China through random sampling (97% women, Mage = 34.01 years, SD = 8.41 years), measuring perceived organizational support, job stress, achievement goal orientation, and professional identity. Results: The results indicated that achievement goal orientations mediated the relationship between perceived organizational support and professional identity. Additionally, job stress moderated the influence of perceived organizational support on specific goal orientations. Discussion: This study makes unique contributions by unraveling the distinct motivational pathways through which perceived organizational support influences professional identity, while highlighting the contextual role of job stress in shaping these mechanisms in Chinese kindergarten teachers.