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Action research is a preferred research method among primary and secondary school teachers. However, due to the lack of in-depth understanding of action research, teachers have encountered various challenges in the actual research process. Establishing a structural model for developing action research capabilities can help frontline teachers accurately grasp the essence of action research and truly understand what it is and how to conduct it. Based on research and analysis of relevant literature, combined with teaching practice, a "stepped-multifaceted" ability structure model has been extracted, with core competency elements such as "problem awareness, communication and collaboration skills, research skills, analytical and summarization skills, and reflection and improvement skills". This model visualizes the action research ability of primary and secondary school teachers. Based on this model, the following pathways have been proposed to enhance teachers' action research capabilities and promote their professional development: creating a community that encourages teacher communication and collaboration skills, using the concept of "community" to enhance their participation abilities; using research projects to drive teachers' development of research skills by allowing them to learn through practical experience; encouraging teachers to engage in continuous reflection throughout the entire research process, thereby stimulating their problem awareness and research consciousness; emphasizing the importance of lifelong learning and improving one's abilities through the cyclical process of "learning-action".

Teachers' emotions and well-being are critical not only for their personal and professional development but also for facilitating holistic development of students. With increasing risks and uncertainties from sociopolitical changes and the global pandemic, teachers are facing tremendous stress which has affected their self-efficacy. This cross-sectional study of 1614 teachers from 50 primary schools in Hong Kong investigates how teachers' perception of emotional competences and their emotional labour strategies relate to their self-efficacy in moral and character education via confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. The results reveal that both teachers' emotional competences and teachers' emotional labour strategies are positively associated with teachers' self-efficacy in moral and character education. Understanding the relationships among emotional competences, emotional labour strategies and teachers' self-efficacy may be the first step in intervention implementation and effective policy development that could improve teachers' self-efficacy in their provision of moral and character education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]