Relationship between nursing student's learning engagement and teacher's support in a medical school in Shaanxi Province: mediating role of professional identity / 中华医学教育探索杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To analyze the mediating effect of professional identity between teacher's support and student's learning engagement in nursing students.Methods:A total of 409 nursing students were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. Their professional identity, teacher's support, learning engagement were evaluated by Professional Identification Scale (PIS), Nursing Students' Perceptions of Instructor Caring (NSPIC), and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Student (UWES-S). A mediating model was proposed and the impacts of professional identity on teacher's support and learning engagement were observed.Results:The average score of NSPIC was (4.60±0.67) points, that of PIS was (3.58±0.63) points, and that of UWES-S was (4.79±0.97) points. The scores of NSPIC and PIS were a highly positive correlation ( r=0.504, P<0.001). The scores of NSPIC was positively correlated with the scores of UWES-S ( r=0.362, P<0.001). The scores of PIS was positively correlated with the scores of UWES-S ( r=0.315, P<0.001). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that learning engagement of nursing students was associated with the total score of PIS and supportive learning atmosphere, which accounted for 16.6% of the total variability. Professional identity had a mediating effect between teacher's support and learning engagement, with statistic significance among all coefficients of each path ( P<0.05), and all the fitting indexes were good. Teachers support had direct effect (0.31) on learning engagement and indirect effect (0.11) on learning engagement through professional identity. Conclusion:Teacher's support can directly predict student's learning engagement and professional identity plays an mediating role between them.