AI Principals’ Authentic Leadership and Teachers’ Work Engagement in the UAE Schools: Mediating Effect of Teachers' Resilience amid Educational Reform

Abstract

Globally, the sustainability of teacher work engagement has become a pressing concern amid ambitious educational reforms, increasing professional demands, and rising teacher turnover, particularly in the UAE. This study investigates how principals’ authentic leadership shapes teachers’ work engagement through the mediating influence of teachers' resilience. Drawing upon Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model, the research tested both direct and mediated relationships among authentic leadership, teachers’ resilience, and their work engagement. Data from 422 teachers in the UAE first-cycle schools across ten Emirates were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings revealed a partial mediation model: authentic leadership directly predicts teacher work engagement and resilience. It also reveals that teachers' resilience has a direct influence on their work engagement and partially mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement. Specifically, principals who demonstrated self-awareness, relational transparency, and moral integrity fostered teachers’ resilience, which in turn strongly stimulated their engagement. These results highlight resilience as a crucial mechanism linking leadership to sustained engagement under reform-intensive conditions. The study enriches leadership and psychological capital research by illustrating the enabling function of authentic leadership as a contextual resource provider rather than a direct driver of engagement. Practically, the findings underscore the importance of integrating authentic leadership practices with resilience initiatives in leadership development programs and school policies to strengthen teacher engagement and educational reform outcomes.