Abstract: Teachers' job engagement is the positive and perfect state of teachers in their teaching and education practice. It is an important manifestation of their energetic engagement in education. The study attempted to explore the mechanism where professional development awareness, motivation and support impact rural teachers' job engagement. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 685 rural teachers in an area of Yunnan Province. The results show that: 1) career expectation positively predicted rural teachers' job engagement; 2) professional development awareness and professional development motivation separately played a partly mediating role in the relation between career expectation and rural teachers' job engagement; 3) professional development awareness and professional development motivation served as a chained mediation between their career expectation and job engagement; and 4) the relationship between career expectation and professional awareness was moderated by professional development support. To put in concrete words, career expectation had a positive predictive effect on professional development awareness at the high level of professional development support while, at low levels of professional development support, career expectations had no predictive effect on professional development awareness. The results of this study have important implications for formulating relevant policies and school management strategies to encourage rural teachers' job engagement.

Key words: rural teacher, career expectation, professional development awareness, professional development motivation, professional development support, job engagement