Uplifting teachers’ human capital through on-the-job training: a determinant for teacher self-efficacy

Research on teacher education has widely acknowledged that enhancing teacher quality is a key element in improving educational outcomes globally. Within the various strategies to advance teachers’ professional competencies, on-the-job training is regarded as a practical and sustainable mechanism. However, there remains a remarkable gap in large-scale quantitative research examining the effectiveness of teacher in-service training in Chinese context within international literature. This study investigated the effects of teachers’ participation in in-service training on their human capital accumulation and self-efficacy by secondarily analyzing survey data from 3976 Chinese secondary school teachers. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that participation in professional development activities had significant direct effects on both teacher human capital (β = .197, p < .001) and teacher self-efficacy (β = .480, p < .001). Furthermore, professional cooperation significantly impacted teacher human capital (β = .338, p < .05) and self-efficacy (β = .259, p < .001). Importantly, teacher human capital itself was a strong predictor of teacher self-efficacy (β = .640, p < .001), and a significant mediation effect was found, confirming that human capital development is a key pathway through which professional cooperation enhances self-efficacy. The results suggest that educational policymakers and school leaders in China should prioritize structured and sustained opportunities for professional development and collaborative exchange to enhance teacher quality. These results offer empirical insights on the role of in-service training in improving teacher-level outcomes within the Chinese educational system. The study’s theoretical and practical implications, limitations and future research consideration were discussed.