Abstract
Teachers’ cooperation is essential for enhancing professional teaching capabilities, classroom instruction quality, and overall educational standards. Recent studies indicate that feedback received by teachers may positively influence teacher cooperation; however, the underlying mechanisms of this relationship remain insufficiently understood, particularly within Asian educational contexts. This study aimed to develop and test a moderated chain mediation model linking received feedback to teacher cooperation via positive emotions and trust, conditioned by work autonomy. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, the present study developed and empirically tested this model using data from 2126 Hong Kong teachers in the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Of these participants, 50.8% were female (M = 40.83 years, SD = 10.67). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted using SPSS 22.0 and Process 3.5 to analyze key variables, including received feedback, positive emotions, feeling of trust, work autonomy, and teachers’ cooperation. Primary findings revealed a significant positive correlation between received feedback and teacher’s cooperation, both directly and indirectly. Moreover, positive emotions and trust jointly served as chain mediators in this relationship. Additionally, work autonomy significantly moderated the effect of feedback on positive emotions. Specifically, a positive correlation was observed between received feedback and positive emotions only among teachers with high levels of workplace autonomy. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that received feedback has a positive influence on teacher cooperation, both directly and through a chain-mediated pathway involving positive emotions and trust, with work autonomy moderating the initial stage from feedback to positive emotions. These findings provide an empirical basis for educational administrators to implement feedback mechanisms that support teacher autonomy, thereby fostering its interpretation as constructive information that builds positive emotions and trust, rather than as a controlling intervention.
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Data availability
The analytic dataset used in this study has been made available as supplementary dataset, including: (a) the original raw microdata for the Hong Kong region extracted from the publicly accessible PISA 2022 database, (b) the cleaned analytic dataset used for the statistical analyses reported in this manuscript, (c) the variable dictionary detailing all variables, coding schemes, and transformations applied, and (d) the complete output files for the mediation and moderated mediation models (including all parameter specifications and bootstrap settings). The full PISA 2022 database is openly accessible through the OECD repository at https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2022database/. In accordance with good data-management practices, only the Hong Kong subset relevant to the present study is redistributed here.
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C.P.: conceptualisation, writing, review & editing, formal analysis. Z.X.: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft, formal analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Pang, C., Xie, Z. How does the provision of feedback influence teachers’ cooperation? A moderated chain mediation model. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06582-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06582-9
