Teachers’ Emotional Commitment: The Emotional Bond That Sustains Teaching

This study introduces and validates the construct of Teacher Emotional Commitment (CED), understood as the conative–behavioral dimension that characterizes the emotional bond that teachers establish with their students. To this end, two complementary studies were conducted in the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands (Spain), with the aim of: to empirically isolate the factorial structure of CED and differentiating it from related constructs, such as empathy; to analyze its presence in both active teachers and those in initial training; and to test the theoretical model’s validity by expanding the sample and enlarging the response scale. Study 1 involved 854 practicing teachers and 701 teachers in training, following a validation process that included exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, as well as item response theory models. The results showed a four-factor structure: loving proactivity, teacher compassion, instructional commitment, and communicative affectivity, with adequate reliability and discriminant validity indices with respect to empathy. Study 2, with an expanded sample of 2096 participants, confirmed the robustness of the model. The findings allow us to consider CED as a psychological competence that can be trained, with relevant implications for improving the educational relationship, student learning, and the emotional well-being of teachers.