Perceived organizational support and family, school collaboration among kindergarten teachers: job satisfaction as a mediator and occupational commitment as a moderator

Perceived organizational support has been found to correlate with family, school collaboration, yet the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this association, particularly under different levels of occupational commitment, remain insufficiently understood. The present study examined whether job satisfaction mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support and family, school collaboration, and whether kindergarten teachers’ occupational commitment moderates the direct and indirect pathways linking perceived organizational support to family, school collaboration via job satisfaction. Participants were 1,312 kindergarten teachers in China, recruited through convenience sampling. They completed self-report measures of perceived organizational support, family, school collaboration, job satisfaction, and occupational commitment. Results indicated that perceived organizational support was positively associated with family, school collaboration, and that job satisfaction partially mediated this association. Moderated mediation analyses further showed that occupational commitment moderated the path from perceived organizational support to job satisfaction. Specifically, the positive association between perceived organizational support and job satisfaction was stronger among teachers with higher occupational commitment. These findings elucidate the mechanisms through which perceived organizational support relates to family, school collaboration and advance understanding of the mediating process and its conditional effects, thereby providing empirical evidence on when and why teachers are more likely to sustain high-quality family, school collaboration.