research on teachers burnout

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 29 May 2019

Burnout among school teachers: quantitative and qualitative results from a follow-up study in southern Sweden

• Inger Arvidsson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8069-0819 1 ,
• Ulf Leo 2 ,
• Anna Larsson 1 ,
• Carita Håkansson 1 ,
• Roger Persson 1 , 3 , 4 &
• Jonas Björk 1  

BMC Public Health volume  19 , Article number:  655 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

28k Accesses

60 Citations

4 Altmetric

Metrics details

Teachers are at high risk of stress-related disorders. This longitudinal study aimed to (a) identify which occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors and self-efficacy at baseline that were of importance for burnout, (b) explore associations between changes in the studied factors versus changes in burnout, and (c) by interviews increase the understanding of perceived job demands among teachers.

A cohort of 310 Swedish teachers in school-years 4–9 responded to a questionnaire of occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors, self-efficacy and burnout, at baseline and at follow-up (mean 30 months later). A combined measure with four levels of burnout was crafted, based on exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy (Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey). Quantitative data were analysed with multiple ordinal regression, and qualitative data were analysed with content analysis of interview responses from a subgroup of the teachers ( n  = 81).

The occurrence of high burnout (level 2 and 3 combined) were similar at baseline and follow-up (14% vs. 15%). However, many teachers fluctuated between the levels of burnout (28% increased and 24% decreased). Burnout at baseline was of importance for change of work or being off duty at follow up. In the multi-exposure model, low self-efficacy [OR 0.42; CI 0.26–0.68] and high job demands [OR 1.97; CI 1.02–3.8] were the strongest explanatory variables. Low self-efficacy remained as the strongest explanatory factor after adjustment for burnout at baseline. Increased job demands during follow-up was associated with an increased level of burnout [OR 3.41; CI 1.73–6.69], whereas increased decision latitude was associated with a decreased level of burnout [OR 0.51; CI 0.30–0.87]. Two major categories of demands emerged in the qualitative analysis; i.e. too high workload and a sense of inadequacy.

Conclusions

A substantial proportion of teachers showed signs of burnout at both occasions. Low self-efficacy and high job demands was of importance for burnout, and changes in burnout was further associated with changes in decision latitude. The results points to the need of actions on individual, organizational and a societal levels.

Peer Review reports

According to the Allostasis model [ 1 , 2 ] and the Cognitive Activation Theory of Stress [ 3 ] and similar biomedical mainstream theorizing [ 4 ], health is dependent on how well individuals adapt to psychosocial, environmental, and physical challenges. The responses to such challenges to psychological or physiological integrity of the individual is called stress and aims to maintain physiological balance and in extension increase survival and reproductive success. From this perspective it is interesting that the teaching profession stands out and have been identified as one of the most stressful occupations with a potential to cause poor health [ 5 ]. In fact, in Sweden teaching is one of the professions with most long-term sick-leave [ 6 ] and Johnson et al. [ 5 ] compared 26 different occupations and found that teachers scored among the lowest on physical health, psychological well-being and job satisfaction. In addition, high turnover intentions and high sick leave levels have also brought attention to health issues among teachers, especially exhaustion and burnout [ 7 ]. Burnout can be described as a psychological syndrome characterized by exhaustion, cynicism/depersonalization and reduced professional efficacy [ 7 ]. A previous literature review of studies in different occupational groups has shown that traditional risk factors such as high demands, low job control, high workload, low reward and job insecurity increased the risk for developing exhaustion [ 8 ].

The teaching profession entails being subjected to various job demands that often underpin a perception of a heavy workload [ 5 ]. However, an increasing time pressure seems to be an international tendency in the teaching occupation [ 9 ]. Other examples of job demands are frequent meetings that interfere with preparation time, administrative paper work generated by the management and being subjected to constant reforms and changes that demand re-organization of work and work tasks [ 10 , 11 ]. The complex work environment and increasing time pressure may also contribute to reduced job control, which is a well-known risk factor for stress (8). Further, teaching is a profession that entails a high degree of face-to-face interaction with pupils, who may show poor behaviour, attitudes, motivation and performance [ 10 , 12 ]. Other stressors that teachers have to deal with include having to cope with pressure from the parents of the school children and sometimes unrealistic expectations from the society [ 10 ]. All these factors may contribute to emotional demands. At the same time, teachers are required to display their own emotions with restraint, i.e. demands of hiding emotions [ 5 ].

Given the work conditions outlined above, it is clear that the teacher’s personal resources are important to counter the effects of a stressful work situation. One personal resource of importance for performance is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is often considered important as it concerns the appraisal of one’s capabilities to successfully carry out a particular course of action [ 13 ]. According to Taris and Schaufeli [ 14 ] self-efficacy could act as a personal resource by influencing the perceptions of work demands and resources; which in extension may affect commitment, well-being and health. A previous study showed that self-efficacy buffered the demands-strain relationship among teachers [ 15 ]. In another study it was shown that self-efficacy was significantly negatively associated to the depersonalisation and emotional exhaustion dimensions of burnout, and significantly positively associated to the personal accomplishment dimension [ 16 ].

Another important resource and aspect of work is access to social support [ 17 , 18 ]. For example, Littrell, Billingsley and Cross [ 19 ] showed that when principals are emotionally supportive and provide informational support, teachers report greater job satisfaction, occupational commitment and health. Yet another occupational factor that may have importance for the teachers’ well-being is the working conditions during computer work that can bring both physical and mental demands [ 20 ].

Besides work stress, life-style factors such as insufficient time for personal relaxation [ 21 ] and lack of energy for domestic work [ 22 ], have been shown to contribute to the development of stress and burnout, while physical activity may be a protective factor [ 23 ].

In the present study, we build on an earlier study of 490 Swedish school-teachers [ 24 ], in which we explored cross-sectional associations between occupational and sociodemographic factors, life-style, self-efficacy and burnout. In that study we used a combined burnout measure based on the three dimensions exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy, which constituted the outcome of burnout in four levels of increasing seriousness (level 0–3). We observed that the perception of low self-efficacy, high job demands, poor leadership and teaching in higher grades were the factors that were most strongly associated with high burnout at baseline. As high job demands and low self-efficacy were the factors most strongly associated with burnout at baseline it is of interest to investigate to what extent these or other factors are of importance for burnout levels across time. By including sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, we hope to control for confounding when assessing the impact of various aspects of the job environment. Therefore, in the present study we present the results from longitudinal analyses using data from a follow-up survey conducted 2–3 years later.

Our study had three distinct aims:

To identify the relative importance of occupational, sociodemographic and life-styles factors and self-efficacy among teachers at baseline, for burnout two to three years later, with a special interest in job demands and self-efficacy.

To investigate how changes in occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors and self-efficacy during the follow-up period are associated with burnout at follow-up.

To increase the understanding of the perception of job demands among teachers.

Study design and participants

The present study participants were part of a parallel study of work related musculoskeletal disorders that entailed teachers, nurses and sonographers [ 25 ]. The present two-wave longitudinal study utilised a non-random sampling strategy that targeted these three specific occupational groups characterized by either physical (nurses and sonographers) or by mental workload (teachers).

The participants in the present study sample of teachers responded to a questionnaire that included questions on occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors, self-efficacy and burnout [ 24 , 25 ]. The questionnaire was administered at baseline (2010–2012) and at follow-up (2012–2014) with a follow-up period of mean 30 months (SD 3.0 months). The length of follow-up periods did not differ noticeably between the genders or between teachers in different year of compulsory school.

The baseline questionnaire was directed to 769 teachers employed at 50 compulsory schools across seven Swedish municipalities, whereof 490 teachers (134 men and 356 women) participated in the study. In each school, all teachers educating children in theoretical subjects in school years 4–9 (aged 10–15 years) were invited. A further inclusion criterion was work at least 50% of fulltime during a period of at least 3 months before fulfilling the baseline questionnaire.

A subgroup of the teachers, i.e. all teachers at three of the participating schools, were invited to participate in an on-site clinical examination and an interview about their working conditions. Out of 89 invited teachers 81 accepted participation, while eight teachers declined. These interview-responses from the teachers were included in the qualitative part of the present study.

Out of the 490 teachers at baseline, 310 participated at follow-up. The response rate was 63% (65% for the women and 60% for the men). High burnout (level 2 and 3 combined) at baseline was more frequent among non-participants (17%) than among participants (14%; Table  1 ). The drop-outs from baseline to follow-up was a heterogeneous group: the frequency of high burnout at baseline was 37% among the teachers who were off duty/changed work at follow-up vs. 14% among the participants ( p  = 0.055; Fisher’s exact test). In contrast, the frequency of high burnout at baseline was low among teachers who retired during the follow-up period (4%).

The 16-item version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS [ 26 , 27 ] was used. The items in MBI-GS cover three dimensions: exhaustion (5 items), cynicism (5 items), and professional efficacy (6 items). All items were responded to on a 7-point scale: 0 = “never”; 1 = “a few times a year or less”; 2 = “once a month or less”; 3 = “a few times a month”; 4 = “once a week”, 5 = “a few times a week” and 6 = “every day”. The mean score for each dimension was calculated and used as an outcome in unadjusted group comparisons. In addition, we applied a previously used supplementary scoring procedure [ 24 ] that entailed making a dichotomous classification of each item according to the linguistic meaning of the response alternatives. Each item was therefore dichotomized into 0 = “low” or 1 = “high” in relation to a cut-off score of 4 = “once a week”. Accordingly, to be classified as a burnout case at least three of the five dichotomized items had to be high on the exhaustion and cynicism dimensions. For the six professional efficacy items, at least three had to be high to be classified as having burnout in terms of low professional efficacy. In addition, an individual-level composite measure of the three burnout dimensions was created by combining the dichotomized responses into four ordered categories: 0 = subjects reporting low exhaustion, low cynicism and high professional efficacy (referents); 1 = subjects reporting either high exhaustion or high cynicism or low professional efficacy (one out of the three dimensions); 2 = subjects reporting high exhaustion and/or high cynicism and/or low professional efficacy (two out of the three dimensions); and, 3 = subjects reporting high exhaustion and high cynicism and low professional efficacy (all three dimensions).

Ergonomic working conditions

One study-specific item assessed to what extent the participants were satisfied with their computer work stations. The item read: “ Are you satisfied with the computer work-station arrangements?” and was responded to on a five-point scale: 1= “yes, very satisfied (can work comfortably)”, 2 = “yes, rather satisfied”, 3= “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied”, 4 = “no, rather dissatisfied”, 5 = “no, very dissatisfied (uncomfortable/strenuous work)”.

• Psychosocial working conditions

The psychosocial conditions at work were in part assessed with a Swedish version of the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) [ 28 , 29 ] that covered three dimensions: Job demands (9 items), Job control (9 items) and Job support (8 items). The items were responded to on a four-point scale, indicating the level of agreement with various statements about conditions at work (1 = totally disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, 4 = totally agree). The mean value in each dimension was calculated for each individual, and the mean scores were used as continuous measures in the analysis [ 28 , 29 ]. Higher scores indicated higher demands, more control, and better support.

The JCQ was supplemented with 18 items from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire [ 30 ] that assessed: emotional demands (3 items), demands on hiding emotions (2 items), sensory demands (5 items), and leadership (8 items). All questions were answered on a five-point scale. The mean score in each dimension was calculated for each individual and used as a continuous variable [ 30 ]. Higher scores indicate higher demands and better leadership.

Self-efficacy

General self-efficacy was assessed with three items [ 31 ]. The items were formulated as statements and read: “You can deal with most unexpected events”, “You can solve most problems if you really want to” and “Irrespective of what is going on in your life, you feel that you can handle it”. All items had five response categories: 1 = “never/ hardly ever”, 2 = “seldom”, 3 = “sometimes”, 4 = “often”, and 5 = “always”. The mean score (range 1–5) was calculated for each individual and used as a continuous variable in the analysis. Higher scores indicated greater self-efficacy.

Sociodemographic and life-style factors

Information was collected about gender, age and marital status. Further, o ne study-specific item assessed personal recovery and read: “How much of your leisure time do you normally use for personal recovery?” The item was responded to on a 5-point scale: 1 = hardly any time at all; 2 = < 1 h/day, 3 = 1 h/day; 4 = 2 h/day; 5 = 3 h/day and 6 = ≥4 h/day. Another study-specific item assessed domestic work and read: “How many hours a week, do you normally work at home doing cleaning, gardening, cooking, etc.?” The item was responded to on a 5-point scale: 1 = 0–2 h/week; 2 = 3–10 h/week; 3 = 11–20 h/week; 4 = 21–30 h/week and 5 = ≥ 31 h/week). Exercise was assessed by asking about the frequency of physical exercise (0 = never; 1 = occasionally; 2 = once a week; 3 = 2–4 times/week; 4 ≥ 5 times/week).

Interviews of the teachers

The interviews of the subgroup of 81 teachers included four open questions: “Which favourable and unfavourable work conditions do you perceive?”, “Which work tasks do you perceive as ergonomically stressful?” and “Do you have any suggestions of improvements of the work environment at your workplace?” The interview guide is given in Additional file  1 . Each of the interviews lasted for about 10 minutes. The teachers answered the open questions and the interviewer registered their responses by taking field notes (and thus performed the first condensation of the answers). In the present study, the answers of the question “unfavourable working conditions” were selected and further analysed with a focus on answers associated with job demands.

Quantitative analyses

All statistical analyses of quantitative data were performed with the IBM SPSS software, version 24 (IBM Corp.). P -values ≤0.05 (two-tailed) were considered as statistically significant.

Analyses of differences between follow-up and baseline were made for the dimensions exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy, with the non-parametric Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test.

The participants at baseline ( n  = 490) were stratified into low/high demands (dichotomized by the median value 2.9) and low/median/high self-efficacy (scores < 3, 3 and > 3).

Among the teachers who participated at both baseline and follow-up ( n  = 310), the Jonkheere-Terpstra test for trend was used to examine occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors at baseline, across the four ordered levels of increased burnout at follow-up (Additional file 2 : Table S1).

Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the importance of burnout (level 0–3) at follow-up were first estimated in single-exposure ordinal regression models for all variables (occupational, sociodemographic and lifestyle factors and self-efficacy) at baseline. We are using the cumulative odds model with location parameters only, which estimates average odds ratios (ORs) of all possible dichotomizations of the ordinal response variable.

In the next step, ORs for levels of burnout at follow-up were estimated using multi-exposure ordinal regression, for variables with single-exposure p -values < 0.3. In the multi-exposure ordinal regression models, the psychosocial dimensions job demands, job control and job support from job content questionnaire were chosen as explanatory factors prior to emotional demands, demands of hiding emotions and leadership from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire. This decision was based on the risk for conceptual overlap and a substantial Spearman correlation coefficient (R S ) with the dimensions in Job Content Questionnaire (job demands - emotional demands R S 0.48; Job demands – leadership R S 0.47; leadership – job support R S 0.69). In the last step, by adjusting for the level of burnout at baseline we tried to quantify how much of the different explanatory factors for burnout at follow-up that were due to associations with burnout that were present already at baseline.

Using single- and multi-exposure ordinal regression with burnout at follow up (level 0–3) as dependent variable, we also analysed how changes between baseline and follow-up in occupational and life-style factors and self-efficacy (calculated for each individual by subtracting the baseline scores from the follow-up scores) were associated with (a) the level of burnout at follow-up, and (b) changes in the level of burnout between baseline and follow-up. The latter analysis was performed by adjusting the multi-exposure model for the level of burnout at baseline.

Qualitative analysis

Qualitative data from the interviews were analysed by content analysis [ 32 ], and with simple frequency counts of the categories that emerged from the data. First, all the notes were transcribed into a word document, and read to get a sense of the whole. In the next step meaning units were extracted, condensed and labelled with a code. Next all codes were interpreted and compared for differences and similarities and two categories emerged.

Basic characteristics for the participants at baseline are presented, stratified for the two variables that stood out in the previous cross-sectional analysis [ 24 ], that is, self-efficacy and job demands, in Table  2 . Generally, while high job demands co-occurred with a number of other work-related dimensions, self-efficacy seemed to be more of a personal characteristic and less associated with other psychosocial dimensions. The continuous variables job demand and self-efficacy were weakly correlated (rho = 0.09, not in table ).

Changes in burnout from baseline to follow up

The mean exhaustion score increased between baseline and follow-up (2.8 vs. 3.0, respectively; p  = 0.05), while the mean cynicism and professional efficacy scores did not differ (1.6 vs. 1.7; p  = 0.26 and 5.0 vs. 5.1; p  = 0.12, respectively). The patterns of the original dimensions of MBI-GS (i.e. exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy) across the four levels of burnout are shown in Table  3 .

The frequency of high burnout (level 2 and 3) were similar at baseline and follow-up (14% vs. 15%). However, about half of the teachers (48%) fluctuated between the different levels of burnout (Fig.  1 ). Increasing levels of burnout was found in 28% of the teachers, while 24% of the teachers reported decreased burnout and some of them were recovered at follow-up (level 0). About one third (31%) reported low burnout (level 0) at both occasions.

Levels of burnout at baseline and at follow-up. Cross tabulation of the number of participants at baseline and follow-up, distributed across the four levels of burnout

Single-exposure models of risk factors for burnout at follow-up

Description of all occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors and self-efficacy at baseline, stratified by the four levels of burnout at follow-up, are given in Additional file  2 : Table S1.

In single-exposure models, several factors at baseline was of importance for the level of burnout at follow-up (Table  4 ). Burnout at baseline and the perceptions of high job demands, high emotional demands, high demands of hiding emotions and much complaints on the computer workstation arrangements were all significant explanatory factors for high burnout at follow-up. High support from manager, high self-efficacy and perceived good leadership at baseline explained lower levels of burnout. The same was true for much physical exercise and much time for personal relaxation. Year of compulsory school, decision latitude, skill discretion, support from colleagues, gender, age, seniority, marital status and the amount of household work were not of significant importance for burnout at follow-up.

Multi-exposure models for burnout at follow-up

The results indicated that low self-efficacy [OR 0.42; CI 0.26–0.68] and high job demands [OR 1.97; CI 1.02–3.8] at baseline were the strongest explanatory factors of high burnout at follow-up (Table 4 ). An OR = 1.97 associated with job demands means that the odds of scoring high rather than low on the burnout scale during follow up is 1.97 higher on average among teachers with one unit higher job demand at baseline (e.g. 3 rather than 2). Note that the OR is an average estimate across all possible dichotomizations (high vs. low) of the ordinal burnout scale.

When the model was adjusted for the level of burnout at baseline, low self-efficacy remained as the variable with most importance (Table 4 ). The impact of burnout at baseline decreased, and the confounding was mostly due to self-efficacy and only to a minor extent due to job demands (not in tables).

Changes in occupational, sociodemographic and life-styles factor and self-efficacy in relation to burn-out at follow up

For the total study sample, there were only minor numerical differences in mean values between the occupational, sociodemographic and life-styles factor and self-efficacy at baseline and follow-up (Table  5 ). However, as shown by the standard deviations, there were large individual variations for all the investigated factors. In the single-exposure models increased job demand, decreased decision latitude and increased emotional demands were associated with a high level of burnout at follow-up.

When adjusting for the level of burnout at baseline, i.e. in analysis how changes in occupational, sociodemographic and life-styles factors and self-efficacy between baseline and follow-up were associated with changes in burnout (Table 5 ), a statistically significant co-variation was found for job demands and decision latitude: Increased job demands was associated with an increased level of burnout [OR 3.41; CI 1.73–6.69], whereas increased decision latitude was associated with a decreased level of burnout [OR 0.51; CI 0.30–0.87]. Further, the level of burnout at baseline was of importance.

Interview of the teachers

In the content analysis of the individual interviews of a subgroup of the teachers ( n  = 81) two major categories of demands emerged: Too high workload and a sense of inadequacy.

Too high workload

Approximately half of the group of the interviewed teachers ( n  = 42), stated that an increase of administrative work tasks contributed to the high workload. Thus, the high workload was not attributed to the teaching itself but rather to the continuous increase of new demands that was added without removing other work tasks. This may be exemplified by the following field-note that quotes one teacher:

"It is much too much that is laid on us. It is outrageous that they put on work tasks without telling what should be removed. Many say they will not be able to continue working." (Teacher in school-year 4-6).

Many teachers stated that the conditions and the increasing amount of administration had a negative impact on the planning of lessons. For example, the teachers reported that they had to deal with new technological systems, new requirements for long term educational planning to align the teaching with the goals, new requirements for grading and assessment of students’ results and extensive individual development plans for each student. Other teachers emphasized a general lack of resources, resulting in too large student groups. Another source of demands put forward by the teachers concerned how teacher absenteeism was dealt with. With respect to this, some teachers explained that there were no substitutes and thus the teachers must fill in for each other. This was perceived to cause unplanned changes in the schedule, a higher work load and limited possibilities to take a break during the working day.

Sense of inadequacy

Circa 40% of the teachers ( n  = 31) in the interviews expressed a sense of inadequacy. According to the teachers, the sense of inadequacy was due to too many work tasks and time pressure combined with a feeling of not being able to do a good job and achieve their pedagogical goals. Many teachers perceived that they did not have time enough to prepare the teaching activities, to interact with the pupils or to meet the needs of pupils with special needs. Altogether, this sense of inadequacy was perceived to lead to frustration, stress and being forced to prioritize different students. This may be exemplified by the following field-note that quotes one teacher:

“Being insufficient is frustrating. You have to choose which students you can devote yourself to” (Teacher in school-year 7–9)

Principal findings

In the single-exposure models, several of the studied factors at baseline, including the level of burnout, were of importance for the level of burnout at follow-up. In the multi-exposure model, among the occupational and personal factors, low self-efficacy and high job demands were the strongest explanatory variables. These two factors were weakly correlated; and thus appear to be independently of importance for burnout.

Changes in job demands and decision latitude scores between baseline and follow-up were associated with changes in the levels of burnout between baseline and follow-up. Increases in job demand scores was associated with an increase in burnout whereas an increase in decision latitude scores was associated with a decrease in burnout.

The content analysis of the individual interview responses, which were provided from a subgroup of the participants, identified that work demands could be classified into two major, but partly intertwined, categories: Too high workload and a sense of inadequacy. A majority of the teachers perceived that an increasing amount of administrative tasks contributed to an increased workload and had a negative impact on the available time for planning of lessons. Many teachers experienced that time pressure combined with a feeling of not being able to do a good job lead to a sense of inadequacy.

Regarding the underlying dimensions of the burnout measure, the mean values in the dimension exhaustion increased between baseline and follow-up, while the mean values in cynicism and professional efficacy did not differ significantly. The frequency of high burnout (level 2 + 3) was similar at baseline and at follow-up (14% vs. 15%, respectively). However, we observed a large fluctuation on the individual level. About one fourth of the teachers reported an increased level of burnout at follow-up, while another fourth reported a reduced level.

Additionally, among the drop-outs from our study, burnout at baseline was associated with being off duty/changing work at follow up. This may be an indicator of that teachers with high burnout were more likely than those with lower levels of burnout, to change job or find other alternatives in order to avoid unfavourable working conditions.

Strengths and weaknesses of the study

There are several strengths but also several limitations in this study that warrant attention before we reach to the conclusions. To begin with, a strength is the longitudinal study design and that we used a common measure of burnout (i.e., MBI-GS) as well as common and tested indicators for occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors and self-efficacy. Another advantage is the use of the burnout-measure both in the standard way (i.e. calculating a mean score in the three dimensions exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy), and as a combined measure of the three dimension on an individual level. Since the original three dimensions were incrementally more unfavorable reported through the increasing levels of burnout, we considered the combined measure as a relevant outcome in the analysis, and a major strength of the study. Further, that we approached teachers in 50 schools across seven municipalities in the south of Sweden is also a strength of the study in that it increases the ecological validity of the study. Likewise, the individual interviews also contributes to the ecological validity of the study in that they provide additional details and insights behind the specific factors the teachers perceive as demanding.

In any event, and despite the longitudinal design, an important limitation of the study is that we only had two assessment rounds with a quite long time separation (i.e. on average 30 months). Observably, the study design is insensitive to finding, or tracking, potential changes and fluctuations that may occur between the two measurements. Further, the different scales and directions of the variables may to some extent make the interpretation of the explanatory variables (risk factors and protective factors) more difficult. Other limitations were that all data were self-reported, and that there was some statistical uncertainty with wide confidence intervals in the outcome measures.

There was only a minor difference in the frequencies of high burnout at baseline between the participants at follow-up and the total group of drop-outs. Thus, we do not believe that this overall selection of participation at follow-up have influenced the results to any major extent. However, a careful analysis in relation the various causes for non-participation suggest that a higher frequency of both the most affected and the healthiest teachers left the study, whereas the teachers with medium burnout levels at baseline remained at follow-up. For example, high burnout at baseline was more common among the group of drop-outs ( n  = 24) who were off duty/changed work, compared to those who participated at follow-up (37% vs. 14%). In contrast, among the teachers that were retired at follow-up ( n  = 43) only 4% reported high burnout at baseline. This selection may have influenced the results, but most likely towards less obvious patterns.

As shown when baseline data was stratified with respect to self-efficacy and job demands, which were the factors most strongly associated with burnout in the previously reported cross-sectional analysis [ 24 ], both low self-efficacy and high job demands co-occurred with a number of other factors. Thus, there is a risk of conceptual overlap between certain variables. Most pronounced, the three demand indicators (i.e. job demands, emotional demands and demands on hiding emotions) were correlated to an extent that only job demands were entered in the multivariate statistical analyses. The risk of potential confounding suggest that appropriate caution is warranted when interpreting the results.

The aim of the interviews was to complement the quantitative analysis with additional information, from many individuals, about their perception of the work environment. However, the interviews lasted for about ten minutes and cannot be considered as any in-depth interviews. Further, we did not conduct any recordings, but the interviewer took field notes. Thus, there is a need of a cautious interpretation of the results. Still, we had a large number of responders and the results gave a picture of underlying factors associated with the high job demands that many teachers experience. Large fractions of the teachers gave similar responses which made it possible to distinguish patterns and receive details of the exposure that was not captured by the questionnaire. Such information is valuable for guidance in preventive actions.

Analytical considerations

In analyses of longitudinal studies, aiming to identify causal relationships, the most common method is to select only the participants who were healthy at baseline and study the exposures in baseline in relation to the onset of disease at follow up. However, such selection not only decreases statistical power but is also inappropriate if the aim is to study fluctuating health conditions where the investigated factors may not only influence the onset but also recovery from the conditions.

In contrast to traditional analyses of to which extent the exposure at baseline is of importance for the health status at follow-up, the conclusions regarding causal relationships from analyses of changes in exposure versus changes in outcome are weaker (the changes are measured simultaneously and by the study participants themselves). Still, in the light of the fluctuation among the teachers between the levels of burnout, the analyses give some interesting information of the factors associated with a changing work situation (in this case job demands and decision latitude) and changes in the teachers’ wellbeing.

The results in relation to previous studies

The personal resources in terms of general self-efficacy turned out to be the strongest explanatory factor for burnout at follow-up, also after adjustment of the levels of burnout at baseline. Similar results have been reported earlier: Shoji et al. [ 33 ] found associations between job burnout and self-efficacy in a meta-analysis of studies in different occupations, Dicke et al. [ 15 ] detected direct effects of self-efficacy on emotional exhaustion in a longitudinal study among teachers, and Lauermann and König [ 34 ] found negative correlations between high self-efficacy and burnout (all three underlying dimensions in our burnout measure). Also, in the latter study [ 34 ] a specific teacher self-efficacy was identified, which was strongly associated with burnout. According to Schwarzer and Hallum [ 35 ] teacher self-efficacy is a personal resource that may protect from the experience of job strain and thus make an escalation of burnout less likely.

Although not a static concept, general self-efficacy is sometimes regarded as an inherent, or long lasting, quality that may differ among individuals. On the group level there were only minor differences in self efficacy between baseline and follow-up. However, on the individual level there was a substantial variation – in both directions - between baseline and follow-up. This probably reflects, as originally theorized by Bandura [ 36 ], that self-efficacy is dependent on the interplay between external and internal factors. Still, the perceived changes in general self-efficacy scores seem to be less important for determining changes in levels of burnout, compared to variations in job demands and decision latitude scores. To what extent this reflects that people in general are more likely to attribute changes as due to external conditions as opposed to attributing changes to alterations in one’s own personality or self-image is not known. One may suspect that individuals with low self-efficacy perceive higher job demands compared to those with a high self-efficacy. However, the correlation between the continuous variables job demand and self-efficacy was rather weak.

Perceived high job demands at baseline was of importance for burnout at follow up. However, in the last step when adjusting the multi-exposure model for the level of burnout at baseline, job demands was no longer a significant explanatory factor. This may be explained by the fact that there was a strong association between job demands and burnout already at baseline [ 24 ], and that there was no further increase of the association at follow up.

Our finding that high job demands was of importance for burnout is in line with several other studies (e.g. Aronsson et al. [ 8 ]). Further, increased job demands scores between baseline and follow-up was associated with an increased level of burnout. However, it was somewhat unexpected that we neither found an association between a low decision latitude and burnout in the cross-sectional study at baseline [ 24 ], and nor as a explanatory factor in the present follow-up study. Compared to other occupational groups such as nurses and sonographers [ 25 ], most of the teachers generally perceived rather high job control, and thus job control may not be the most crucial risk factor for burnout among them. However, in the analysis of changes in decision latitude versus burnout at follow-up, a decrease of decision latitude was associated with an increased level of burnout. More extensive explanations to these observations may be found in the interview-responses: many teachers perceive a continuous increase of new demands and work tasks, which may result in increased time pressure, reduced influence and less freedom to determine how the work is to be performed. Further, the teachers’ perception of not being able to do a good job and achieve their own pedagogical goals may contribute to increased burnout.

Fortunately, a major fraction of those with high burnout at baseline reported a better health at follow-up. The fluctuation between the levels of burnout indicate that for most of the teachers the level of burnout is not a static condition. Only one third of the teachers were without any burnout signs (level 0) at both baseline and follow-up and only 5% reported high burnout at both occasions. The remaining part of the study sample reported either a better or a worse level of burnout at follow up. However, in spite of the fluctuation in burnout on the individual level, at group level the burnout-status at baseline was of importance for the level of burnout at follow-up.

Beyond the observed associations with changes in job demands and decision latitude there may be other possible explanations to the changes of the teachers’ burnout, at both work and in private life, which were not captured in our study. For example, a previous study showed that imbalance between work and private life, i.e. too much work and too little free time for recovery and pleasure, predicted stress-related disorders [ 37 ].

Possible implications

Our finding of a low self-efficacy as an explanatory factor for burnout indicate that actions that strengthen both individuals and the team/collective (collective efficacy [ 38 , 39 ]), may have beneficial effects for the teacher’s well-being. However, to influence an inherent quality such as self-efficacy by organisational changes or political decisions is difficult. Further, the perceived changes in general self-efficacy scores seem to be less important for determining changes in levels of burnout, compared to variations in job demands and decision latitude scores.

There should be greater opportunities of preventing actions aiming to reduce the job demands. A contributing factor to the high job demands that teachers experience may be uncertainties in responsibilities and capacity/power. Thus, there is a need of clearer goals, both at national and local level, and a distribution of responsibilities that are in line with the goals. Support from school leaders in prioritizing between tasks and in assessing when a job is done well enough, may be other measures that reduce the workload. Further, the amount of different work tasks should be reduced, e g by increased, or better use of resources together with support from administrative staff.

A decrease in decision latitude may be a consequence of the high demands: failure to handle all work tasks due to high pressure may lead to a reduced opportunity to influence how work should be done, which in turn might lead to loss of control. Thus, measures to reduce the job demands may also have an impact on the perception of control.

Many occupational, sociodemographic and life-styles factors and self-efficacy, as well as and the level of burnout at baseline, were of statistically significant importance for subsequent burnout two to three years later. Among the occupational and personal factors, job demands and self-efficacy were the strongest explanatory variables when all factors were analysed simultaneously. Noticeably, these two main explanatory variables were only weakly correlated with each other. That many teachers shifted level of burnout during the observation period underlines to some extent that burnout may have a cyclic pattern. Yet, the shifts in burnout were associated with changes in demands (increased) and control (decreased), but was not as much associated with changes in self-efficacy or with any other of the studied factors. Results from the qualitative analysis suggest that the teachers face a complex configuration of demands. Taken together, our findings suggest that a substantial proportion of the teachers have a problematic symptomatology that needs to be dealt with, via actions on individual, organizational and a societal levels.

Abbreviations

Maslach Burnout Inventory – General Survey

Sterling P, Allostasis EJ. A new paradigm to explain arousal pathology. In: Handbook of life stress, cognition and health. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 1988. p. 629–49. Reprinted from: Not in File.

Google Scholar  

Sterling P. Allostasis: a model of predictive regulation. Physiol Behav. 2012;106(1):5–15.

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Ursin H, Eriksen HR. The cognitive activation theory of stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2004;29(5):567–92.

Article   Google Scholar  

Chrousos GP. Stress and disorders of the stress system. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 2009;5(7):374–81.

Johnson S, Cooper C, Cartwright S, Donald I, Taylor P, Millet C. The experience of work-related stress across occupations. J Manag Psychol. 2005;20:178–87.

AFA försäkring (AFA Insurance). Allvarliga arbetsskador och långvarig sjukfrånvaro. Afa försäkring, 2016 (in Swedish).

Maslach C, Leiter MP. The truth about burnout: how organizations cause personal stress and what to do about it. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass; 1997.

Aronsson G, Theorell T, Grape T, Hammarström A, Hogstedt C, Marteinsdottir I, Skoog I, Träskman-Bendz L, Hall C. A systematic review including meta-analysis of work environment and burnout symptoms. BMC Public Health. 2017;264.

Scott C, Stone B, Dinham S. “I Love Teaching but…” International Patterns of Teacher Discontent. Edu-cation Policy Analysis Archives. 2001;9:1–7.

Brown M, Ralph S, Brember I. Change-linked work related stress in British teachers. Res Educ. 2005;67:1–13.

Travers CJ, Cooper CL. Teachers under pressure: stress in the teaching profession. London: Routledge; 1996.

Naring G, Vlerick P, Van de Ven B. Emotion work ¨ and emotional exhaustion in teachers: the job and individual perspective. Educ Stud. 2011;38(1):63–72.

Bandura A. Self-efficacy. Toward a unifying theory of behavioural change. Psychol Rev. 1977;84(2):191–215.

Taris TW, Schaufeli WB. In: van Veldhaven M, Peccei R, editors. Psychology press Individual well-being and performance at work: a conceptual and theoretical overview; 2015. p. 15–34.

Dicke T, Stebner F, Linninger C, Kunter M, Leutner D. A longitudinal study of teachers’ occupational well-being: applying the job demands-resources model. J Occup Health Psychol. 2017.

Evers WJ, Brouwers A, Tomic W. Burnout and self-efficacy: a study on teachers’ beliefs when implementing an innovative educational system in the Netherlands. Br J Educ Psychol. 2002;72:227–42.

Duquett A, Kerouac S, Sandhu BK, Beaudet L. Factors related to nursing burnout: a review of empirical knowledge. Issues Ment Health Nursb. 1994;15:337–58.

Thompson CA, Prottas DJ. Relationships among organizational family support, job autonomy, perceived control, and employee well-being. J Occup Health Psychol. 2006;10:100–18.

Littrell PC, Billingsley BS, Cross LH. The effects of principal support on special and general educators’ stress, job satisfaction, school commitment, health, and intent to stay in teaching. Remedial Spec Educ. 1994;15:297–310.

Arvidsson I, Arvidsson M, Axmon A, Hansson G-Å, Johansson CR, Skerfving S. Musculoskeletal disorders among female and male air traffic controllers performing identical and demanding computer work. Ergonomics. 2006;49(11):1052–67.

Gluschkoff K, Elovainio M, Kinnunen U, Mullola S, Hintsanen M, Keltikangas-Järvinen L, Hintsa T. Work stress, poor recovery and burnout in teachers. Occup Med (London). 2016;66:564–70.

Håkansson C, Ahlborg G Jr. Occupational imbalance and the role of perceived stress in predicting stress-related disorders. Scand J of Occup Therapy, 2018a; 25: 278–287.

Lindegård A, Jonsdottir IH, Börjesson M, Lindwall M, Gerber M. Changes in mental health in compliers and noncompliers with physical activity recommendations in patients with stress-related exhaustion. BMC Psychiatry. 2015;15:272.

Arvidsson I, Håkansson C, Karlson B, Björk J, Persson R. Burnout among Swedish school teachers – a cross-sectional analysis. BMC Public Health. 2016a;6:823.

Arvidsson I, Gremark Simonsen J, Dahlqvist C, Axmon A, Karlson B, Björk J, Nordander C. Cross-sectional associations between occupational factors and musculoskeletal pain in women teachers, nurses and sonographers. BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2016b;17:35.

Maslach C, Jackson SE, Leiter MP. Maslach burnout inventory (3rd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press; 1996.

Maslach C, Jackson SMBI. Maslach burnout inventory ("human services survey"). Research edition. Manual. Palo Alto CA: Consulting Psychologists Press; 1981.

Karasek R, Theorell T. Healthy work stress, productivity and the reconstruction of working life. USA: Harper Collins; 1990.

Karasek R, Brisson C, Kawakami N, Houtman I, Bongers P, Amick B. The job content questionnaire (JCQ): an instrument for internationally comparative assessments of psychosocial job characteristics. J Occup Health Psychol. 1998;3:322–55.

Kristensen TS, Hannerz H, Hogh A, Borg V. The Copenhagen psychosocial questionnaire - a tool for the assessment and improvement of the psychosocial work environment. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2005;31:438–49.

Persson R, Cleal B, Øllgaard Jacobsen M, Villadsen E, Andersen L. The relationship between self-efficacy and help evasion. Health Educ Behav. 2014;41:7–11.

Graneheim UH, Kundman B. Qualitative content analysis in nursing research: concepts, procedures and measures to achieve trustworthiness. Nurse Educ Today. 2004;24:105–62.

Shoji K, Cieslak R, Smuktunowicz E, Rogala A, Benight C, Luszczynska A. Associations between job burnout and self-efficacy: a meta-analysis. Anxiety, stress & coping. 2016;29:367–86.

Lauermann F, König J. Teachers professional competence and wellbeing: understanding the links between general pedagogical knowledge, self-efficacy and burnout. Learn Instr. 2016;45:9–19.

Schwarzer R, Hallum S. Perceived teacher self-efficacy as a predictor of job stress and burnout: mediation analysis. Appl Psychol. 2008;57:152–71.

Bandura A. The self system in reciprocal determinism. Am Psychol. 1978:344–58.

Håkansson C, Ahlborg G. Occupational imbalance and the role of perceived stress in predicting stress-related disorders. Scand J Occup Ther. 2018b;25(4):278–87.

Bandura A. Self-efficacy: the exercise of control. Basingstoke: W. H. Freeman; 1997.

Goddard RD. Collective efficacy: a neglected construct in the study of schools and student achievement. J Educ Psychol. 2001;93(3):467–76.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the late Professor Björn Karlson, who was deeply involved in the design and concept of the study, and Ms. Jenny Gremark Simonsen who contributed to the collection of data. We are also grateful to the teachers for their keen participation.

This study was supported by the Swedish Council for Work Life and Social Research, County councils of Southern Sweden and the Centre for Medicine and Technology for Working Life and Society (Metalund). The sponsors had no further role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.

Availability of data and materials

As the database analysed in this study contains direct or indirect identifiers, it is not available in an open access repository, as there is a possibility that the participants may not be completely anonymous. Readers interested in exploring the data should contact the corresponding author.

Authors´ contributions

IA, CH, RP and JB and were responsible for concept and design. IA carried out the data collection, the interviews and performed the analyses. JB was responsible for the statistical analyses. AL, CH and UL performed the transcription of interview-data and the content analysis. IA, UL, CH, RP and JB were responsible for the interpretation of the quantitative results and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Lund University, SE-221 85, Lund, Sweden

Inger Arvidsson, Anna Larsson, Carita Håkansson, Roger Persson & Jonas Björk

Centre for Principal Development, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Roger Persson

Centre for Medicine and Technology for Working Life and Society (Metalund), Lund, Sweden

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Inger Arvidsson .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The Regional ethic review board in Lund, Sweden approved the study (March 10 2010; reference no. 2010/19). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Additional files

Additional file 1:.

Interview guide, including the four open questions asked in the interview of the teachers. (DOC 26 kb)

Additional file 2:

Table S1. With description of all occupational, sociodemographic and life-style factors and self-efficacy at baseline, stratified by the four levels of burnout at follow-up. (DOCX 17 kb)

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Arvidsson, I., Leo, U., Larsson, A. et al. Burnout among school teachers: quantitative and qualitative results from a follow-up study in southern Sweden. BMC Public Health 19 , 655 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6972-1

Download citation

Received : 29 January 2019

Accepted : 14 May 2019

Published : 29 May 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6972-1

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

BMC Public Health

ISSN: 1471-2458

• Submission enquiries: [email protected]
• General enquiries: [email protected]

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

K−12 teachers' stress and burnout during the covid-19 pandemic: a systematic review.

• 1 Interdisciplinary Research on Teaching, Learning and School Development, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
• 2 Empirical Research on Instruction and Intervention, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

We present the first systematic literature review on stress and burnout in K−12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a systematic literature search, we identified 17 studies that included 9,874 K−12 teachers from around the world. These studies showed some indication that burnout did increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were, however, almost no differences in the levels of stress and burnout experienced by K−12 teachers compared to individuals employed in other occupational fields. School principals' leadership styles emerged as an organizational characteristic that is highly relevant for K−12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout. Individual teacher characteristics associated with burnout were K−12 teachers' personality, self-efficacy in online teaching, and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19. In order to reduce stress, there was an indication that stress-management training in combination with training in technology use for teaching may be superior to stress-management training alone. Future research needs to adopt more longitudinal designs and examine the interplay between individual and organizational characteristics in the development of teacher stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Introduction

Between spring 2020 and summer 2021, teachers and students around the world experienced school closures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although school closures are not unknown historically—occurring, for instance, during the polio pandemic in 1916 ( Meyers and Thomasson, 2021 ) and during the influenza pandemic in 2009 ( Jackson et al., 2014 )—the duration and global reach of school closures during this pandemic was historically unique. At the peak of the pandemic, about 1.5 billion students were affected by school closures ( UNESCO, 2021 ). Empirical research has focused on the considerable consequences the COVID-19 pandemic has had for students' wellbeing ( Asbury et al., 2020 ) and achievement, especially for students from families with low socioeconomic statuses ( Hammerstein et al., 2021 ), thus widening existing social disparities (e.g., Westphal et al., 2016 ). Less attention has been paid to the question of how teachers have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, the related school closures, and the required shift to online teaching ( Kim and Asbury, 2020 ). We aim to shed light on the struggles and strains that COVID-19 and the accompanying school closures posed for K−12 teachers, i.e., for teachers teaching in kindergarten (K) or in the first through the 12th grade (1–12). To achieve this, the present review synthesizes quantitative research on K−12 teachers' stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teacher stress and burnout

Teacher stress is a potential undesirable consequence of the COVID-19 school closures ( UNESCO, 2021 ), emerging from issues such as uncertainties about the duration of school closures or teachers' lack of experience with remote teaching (e.g., Kim and Asbury, 2020 ). The question of how to tackle teacher stress and prevent teachers from leaving their profession as a result of burnout is not new to researchers, teacher educators, and stakeholders in educational policy ( Abel and Sewell, 1999 ; OECD, 2020a ).

Appraisal-based approaches to stress, such as the transactional model of stress and coping ( Lazarus and Folkman, 1984 ; Chang, 2009 ), propose that teacher stress results from a teacher's perception or appraisal of an event or environment as being threatening, harmful, or as entailing stressors that exceed their coping resources. Repeated or prolonged exposure to stressors and inadequate coping strategies may make the symptoms of burnout more likely ( Lazarus, 1999 ). Burnout is defined as a multidimensional “syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment” ( Maslach et al., 1996 , p. 4). Emotional exhaustion is seen as the core element of burnout ( Maslach et al., 2001 ). It comprises physical fatigue and emotional depletion in the workplace and is the symptom most commonly reported by individuals who suffer from burnout ( Maslach et al., 2001 ). Depersonalization is characterized by an indifference toward others in the working context, i.e., students and colleagues in a school. Reduced personal accomplishment describes the process of becoming less efficient in finishing important tasks at work. The Maslach Burnout Inventory, developed by Maslach and Jackson (1981) , allows researchers to assess these three dimensions of burnout.

Drivers of teacher stress and burnout

Up until the 1970's, workload, time pressure, and physical strain were seen as the essential drivers of distressing experiences in the workplace ( Karasek, 1979 ). Building on this view, the demand-control model ( Karasek, 1979 ) explained stress at work as resulting from a combination of high job demand and low job control. Demerouti et al. (2001) underlined the important role of other resources beyond job control, which they framed as physical, organizational, social, and psychological factors in the workplace that may either facilitate the achievement of job goals, including individual growth and development, or ameliorate the detrimental consequences of job demands ( Demerouti et al., 2001 ). The job-demands-resources model ( Demerouti et al., 2001 ) integrates these definitions, suggesting that job demands increase the risk of burnout, while job resources can have both directly positive effects, decreasing the risk of burnout, as well as ameliorating effects that lessen the negative consequences of job demands. The job-demands-resources model stimulated research on the questions of “‘what' causes burnout?” and “‘who' gets burned out?” ( Chang, 2009 , p. 200).

Empirical research on the question of what causes teacher burnout has shown that discipline problems (meta-analysis by Aloe et al., 2014 ; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2017 ), low student motivation (e.g., Friedman, 1995 ; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2016 , 2017 ), and a dissonance between teacher and student values (e.g., Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2017 ) all play a crucial role in teacher burnout. In addition to this, time pressure or work overload may contribute to the development of teacher burnout (e.g., Goddard et al., 2006 ; Betoret and Artiga, 2010 ; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2010 , 2011 , 2017 ; Fernet et al., 2012 ). In terms of the question of “who gets burned out,” meta-analyses has shown that teachers' personality traits—especially a high level of emotional stability and extraversion ( Cramer and Binder, 2015 ; Kim et al., 2019 )—can make teachers less susceptible to burnout. In addition, teachers with higher self-efficacy in classroom management are less likely to be affected by burnout (meta-analysis by Aloe et al., 2014 ). Research findings are, however, inconsistent on the question of whether teachers' age, gender, and/or teaching experience make them more vulnerable to burnout (e.g., review by Chang, 2009 ; Mota et al., 2021 ).

Appraisal-based approaches to stress and burnout illustrate the interplay between personal characteristics and job characteristics. Consequently, more recent studies on burnout have shifted their attention to the question of “‘who' gets burned out in ‘which' situations?” ( Chang, 2009 , p. 201). Most evidence on this question has been gathered in the context of the interplay between classroom disturbances, teacher characteristics, and burnout. For instance, a study by Dicke et al. (2015b) showed that teachers with higher levels of classroom-management self-efficacy were less susceptible to emotional exhaustion when teaching in schools with a higher level of classroom disturbances than those teachers who reported lower levels of self-efficacy (see also Evers et al., 2004 ).

Challenges for teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic demanded profound changes in everyday teaching ( Reimers and Schleicher, 2020 ) “likely to be cognitively and emotionally taxing for teachers” ( Kim and Asbury, 2020 , p. 1,063). Teachers have had to quickly adapt their lessons to remote teaching, which may have been a considerable challenge for many. In 2018, i.e., prior to the pandemic, across all countries participating in the PISA study, one third of 15-year-old students were attending schools whose principals indicated that most of their teachers did not possess the relevant pedagogical and technical skills to utilize digital devices in their lessons ( OECD, 2020b ). Teachers' digital and pedagogical skills (as reported by school principals) varied substantially within countries, with socio-economically advantaged schools having considerably higher digital and pedagogical teacher skills than socio-economically disadvantaged schools ( OECD, 2020b ). What might have further complicated remote teaching is that a not inconsiderable number of students only had restricted home access to the internet and to computers ( OECD, 2022a , b ).

In addition to these issues, many teachers have had to face competing responsibilities when preparing their online lessons while caring for their own children at home, which often resulted in increased parenting stress and work overload ( Hong et al., 2021 ). Given the high incidence of COVID-19 in many countries, we can also assume that a number of teachers have also had to take care of family members who had fallen ill. Other teachers might have even needed to cope with the death of family members, friends, or colleagues. During the months of lockdown, numerous teachers had to manage these challenges while being isolated from friends and family members. All of these factors may have contributed to remote teaching quality not always being optimal. Parents in a number of European countries stated that they were dissatisfied with the poor quality of homeschooling offer ( Thorell et al., 2021 ). As a consequence, many teachers probably had to handle negative feedback from students and parents on top of their already complex workload. Thus, teachers have faced manifold challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic that may have exacerbated stress and even burnout.

The aim of the present review is to shift the spotlight from students to teachers and summarize the existing empirical findings on K−12 teachers' stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following questions guided our research:

1. To what extent did K−12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout increase during the COVID-19 pandemic?

2. Did K−12 teachers experience higher levels of stress and burnout than individuals employed in other occupational fields during the COVID-19 pandemic?

3. Which job and organizational characteristics were associated with higher levels of stress and burnout in K−12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic?

4. Which individual characteristics and activities were associated with higher levels of stress and burnout in K−12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Inclusion criteria

Based on a preliminary literature search, we developed the following criteria for the inclusion of studies: studies (1) had to have measured teacher burnout or stress during the COVID-19 pandemic (2) in quantitative terms and (3) had to focus on K−12 teachers. They had to be published (4) in English (5) between 2020 (when the pandemic began) and 2021 (when we conducted the literature search). For inclusion in our review on research question 1—which focuses on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on teacher stress and burnout—the studies also had to have a longitudinal design with one measurement before and one measurement during the COVID-19 pandemic. For inclusion in our review based on research question 2, the studies had to report differences between K−12 teachers and individuals working in other professions. For inclusion in our review based on research questions 3 and 4, the studies had to report the association with another construct (that was not teacher stress or burnout). We did not include intervention studies without control groups, reviews, or non-empirical studies, e.g., opinion papers.

Literature search and selection of studies

When searching for relevant studies, we used a multistep process (see Figure 1 ). In a first step, we developed a comprehensive search string, including words to describe the COVID-19 pandemic, words to describe stress or burnout, and the term “teachers.” We used the following search string: (Covid OR Corona OR “SARS-CoV-2” OR pandemic) AND teacher AND (stress OR distress OR burnout OR exhaustion OR disengagement OR depersonalization OR “reduced personal accomplishment” OR “reduced efficacy”). Using this syntax, we searched titles, abstracts, and keywords in the database Web of Science. The search was conducted in July 2021. There was no preselection of studies based on a rubric. To allow for the inclusion of studies that had not yet been accepted or had not undergone peer-review, we also searched the preprint archives EdArXiv, PsyArXiv, and SocArXiv, using the same search terms. This literature search yielded 157 studies.

Figure 1 . Literature search process with numbers of articles considered. When screening records by title and abstract, most of the records excluded did either not focus on K−12 teachers, did not apply a quantitative research design or were not written in English. Most of the full-text articles excluded had either not measured teacher burnout or stress or had not sampled K−12 teachers.

The titles and abstracts of all 157 studies identified were thoroughly examined by the authors on the basis of the inclusion criteria. To test for interrater agreement, the first and second author each rated a subset of 20 studies. Inter-rater reliability was Cohen's d = 0.89. In case of disagreement, the authors discussed the studies in question until they reached consensus. During this first step, 41 studies were identified as being potentially eligible for our review. Nearly all of the studies that we excluded in this first step did either not focus on K−12 teachers, did not apply a quantitative research design or were not written in English. We subsequently read the full texts of all of the 41 eligible studies and decided upon inclusion based on our inclusion criteria.

To find additional relevant work, we conducted a backward reference search in the articles selected; that is to say, we examined whether other potentially relevant studies were cited in these articles. The selection process was repeated on the nine additional studies identified during this search. In total, 17 studies were selected for inclusion in our review during full-text screening. These studies were then coded by the first and second author and the coding was checked by a research assistant (see Table 1 ). Most of the studies that we excluded in this second step either had not measured teacher burnout or stress or had no K−12 teachers sample, which only became clear after reading the full-text.

Table 1 . Description of non-intervention studies included in the review.

The quality of the studies included in the review was independently rated by two of the authors based on eight quality indicators for non-intervention studies and 14 quality indicators for intervention studies (adapted from Hwang et al., 2017 ; see Table 2 ). In case of disagreement, studies were discussed until consensus was reached. We did not exclude any studies based on the quality ratings. Instead, these ratings serve as indicators of the overall quality of the research (see Tables 3 , 4 ).

Table 2 . Description of intervention studies included in the review.

Table 3 . Quality ratings of non-intervention studies included in the review.

Table 4 . Quality ratings of intervention studies included in the review.

To give an overview of the included studies, we first present (3.1) the measures of K−12 teacher stress and burnout (3.2), the research designs, and (3.3) the teacher samples used in the studies. We then report (3.4) the study findings on changes in K−12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic and (3.5) differences in stress and burnout between K−12 teachers and individuals employed in other occupational fields. Finally, we outline findings on the relevance of (3.6.1) job and organizational characteristics and (3.6.2) individual characteristics. In Table 1 , we present details about the time frame and the country, in which the study was conducted.

Measures of K−12 teacher stress and burnout

Of the 17 studies included in our review, three studies assessed both teacher stress and burnout, nine studies just assessed teacher burnout, and five studies focused only on teacher stress. Of the 12 studies examining burnout, eight relied on Maslach's operationalization of burnout, applying the original Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; k = 6; Maslach et al., 1986 ) or the MBI-Educator Survey (k = 2; Maslach et al., 1996 ). Two studies ( Panisoara et al., 2020 ; Carreon et al., 2021 ) selected and adapted items of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory ( Demerouti et al., 2003 ; both subscales: exhaustion and disengagement) to measure burnout in regard to distance learning. One study ( Ma et al., 2021 ) administered an adapted version of the Job Burnout Inventory ( Wang et al., 2003 ), a Chinese burnout inventory measuring the subscales passion burnout, energy burnout, and professional self-effectiveness burnout. Pressley (2021 ) used two teacher burnout subscales—assessing administration support and stress—of the Teacher Burnout Scale by Seidman and Zager (1986) .

Of the eight studies measuring stress, four used the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; Cohen et al., 1983 ) and one used an adapted version of this scale (COVID-PSS-10; Pedrozo-Pupo et al., 2020 ). One study ( Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al., 2021 ) applied the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21; Ruiz et al., 2017 ), one study ( Zhou and Yao, 2020 ) assessed diagnostic criteria of an acute stress disorder, based on in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ), and one study ( Collie, 2021 ) measured stress related to change ( Putwain and von der Embse, 2019 ).

Research designs

The majority of the studies (k = 14) included in our review applied a cross-sectional and non-experimental study design, surveying teachers once during the pandemic. One study ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ) surveyed teachers twice during the pandemic. Two studies ( Pozo-Rico et al., 2020 ; Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ) applied intervention designs, in which changes in teachers' stress and burnout in an intervention group were compared to a control group.

Teacher samples

A total of N = 9,874 teachers participated in the 17 studies included in the review. The number of participants per study ranged from 67 to 1,633. Participants were recruited in 20 countries all across the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, China, Morocco, the Philippines, and a range of European countries. We present the teacher samples broken down by country in Table 5 . Teachers' average age ranged from 33.9 to 45.3 years, 77.8% were female (ranging from 34.2% to 96.8%; k = 15; N = 9,358). Overall, 33.9% were primary school teachers (k = 7; N = 3,116). Five studies reported they recruited teachers from both primary and secondary schools ( Zhou and Yao, 2020 ; Collie, 2021 ; Ma et al., 2021 ; Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al., 2021 ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ). Two studies ( Mari et al., 2021 ; Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al., 2021 ) compared K−12-teacher samples to samples of preschool teachers, university teachers, managers, and executive employees.

Table 5 . K−12 teachers samples broken down by country.

Study findings on the changes in teacher stress and burnout during the pandemic

Two studies reported changes in teachers' stress and burnout levels during the pandemic compared to burnout levels prior to the pandemic ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ; control group in Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ). One study showed an increase in lack of accomplishment and depersonalization, but no change in emotional exhaustion ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ; T2 survey in May 2020; MBI; latent change regression), while the other study found an increase in emotional exhaustion (Cohen's d = 1.88), 1 but no change in personal accomplishment or stress (control group in Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ; T2 survey in May 2020; MBI).

Study findings on the differences in stress and burnout between K−12 teachers and individuals employed in other occupational fields

Two studies examined differences between K−12 teachers' stress levels and stress levels in other professions. Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al. (2021 ) found no differences in stress levels experienced by K−12 teachers in comparison to preschool teachers' and university teachers' stress levels (assessed in September 2020; Spain). Mari et al. (2021 ) found no differences in the PSS-subscale perceived self-efficacy between teachers, managers, executive employees, and other practitioners (i.e., lawyers, psychologists, accountants; assessed in April 2020; Italy). On the PSS-subscale helplessness, teachers reported higher scores than managers did (Cohen's d = 0.33), 2 while there were no differences between teachers and the other professions.

Study findings on the links between teacher stress and burnout and job, organizational, and individual characteristics

When presenting the study findings in the following, we will only include findings pertaining to teacher stress and burnout, although some studies reported additional results.

Job characteristics and organizational characteristics

One study examined the role of leadership ( Collie, 2021 ) and showed that autonomy-thwarting leadership was positively associated with emotional exhaustion (standardized beta = 0.46), but not with stress related to change. Autonomy-supportive leadership was not directly associated with emotional exhaustion or stress, but indirectly affected both stress and emotional exhaustion positively via workplace buoyancy.

Workload and amount of remote teaching

Two studies examined associations between teacher burnout and reduced work (hours per week) or self-reported workload ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Collie, 2021 ), as well as the amount of remote teaching ( Collie, 2021 ). Teacher burnout was associated with workload in one of the two studies. Having to teach a mix of in-person and online instruction was associated with higher stress, but not with emotional exhaustion ( Collie, 2021 ).

Job demands and resources

Two studies examined the associations between teacher stress and burnout and job demands ( Rabaglietti et al., 2021 ) and resources ( Sokal et al., 2020b ). Higher emotional exhaustion was associated with higher parental expectations, a lack of resources, technology demands, time-management issues, difficulties in balancing home and teaching, and more resources on instruction and on new methods and technology ( Sokal et al., 2020b ). These job demands and resources were also positively associated with accomplishment and cynicism, although associations were smaller ( Sokal et al., 2020b ). Similar demands were associated with stress ( Rabaglietti et al., 2021 ).

School location

Two studies investigated the role of the school location (rural or remote vs. urban or suburban, Collie, 2021 ; rural vs. suburban vs. urban, Pressley, 2021 ) and found no association with the Teacher Burnout Scale for stress or emotional exhaustion when controlling for individual characteristics.

Individual characteristics

Teacher self-efficacy (for online instruction and digital media).

Five studies examined the role played in burnout by teacher self-efficacy ( Sokal et al., 2020a ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ), teacher self-efficacy for online instruction ( Panisoara et al., 2020 ; Ma et al., 2021 ), or self-efficacy for using digital media ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ). The results showed that lower teacher self-efficacy (for online instruction) was associated with higher lack of accomplishment and higher emotional exhaustion [three out of three studies; the fourth and fifth study ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Panisoara et al., 2020 ) reported similar findings using an overall burnout score without distinguishing between the three dimensions]. Higher self-efficacy for using digital media was associated with less change in lack of accomplishment, but not with change in emotional exhaustion (in one out of one study). Relations with depersonalization were less consistent.

Attitudes toward, and anxiety around, technology

Two studies examined the relationship between attitudes toward technology and e-learning and burnout ( Sokal et al., 2020a ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ) indicating negative cross-sectional associations, but no associations with change in the three burnout dimensions. One study showed that higher levels of burnout were associated with a lower intention to keep on using online teaching tools in the future and with high extrinsic and low intrinsic motivation for online teaching ( Panisoara et al., 2020 ). Anxiety of using technology and providing virtual instruction was the focus of one study that indicated a positive association with one of the two subscales of the Teacher Burnout Scale, namely stress ( Pressley, 2021 ).

Attitudes toward change and adaptability

Two studies examined the association between teacher burnout and teachers' attitudes toward change ( Sokal et al., 2020a ) and adaptability ( Ma et al., 2021 ). The findings in both studies indicate that higher levels of teacher burnout are associated with less favorable attitudes toward change and adaptability.

Personality

Five studies researched the associations between teachers' Big Five personality traits ( Collie, 2021 ), general self-efficacy ( Rabaglietti et al., 2021 ), sense of control ( Zhou and Yao, 2020 ), resilience ( Sokal et al., 2020a ; Liu et al., 2021 ), and teacher stress and burnout. These studies showed that higher levels of teacher burnout and stress were associated with higher neuroticism, lower general self-efficacy, sense of control, and resilience, while there was no significant association with extraversion. Greater openness was associated with greater stress, but not with emotional exhaustion ( Collie, 2021 ). 3

Fear or self-rated risk of COVID-19 infection

Three studies studied associations between teacher stress or burnout and teachers' fear of COVID-19 ( Carreon et al., 2021 ; Pressley, 2021 ) and self-rated risk of getting infected with COVID-19 ( Oducado et al., 2021 ). Findings indicate that higher stress or burnout is associated with a higher level of fear and self-rated risk of getting infected.

Social support and basic psychological needs

Three studies examined the role of social support ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Sokal et al., 2020b ; Zhou and Yao, 2020 ). Social support was not associated with stress in one study ( Zhou and Yao, 2020 ), but with burnout in two studies ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Sokal et al., 2020b ). One of the latter studies indicated that teachers with higher social support from family and friends experienced higher emotional exhaustion, but greater accomplishment ( r ≤ 0.15; Sokal et al., 2020b ), while the other study indicated that teachers with more social support experienced less symptoms of burnout ( Amri et al., 2020 ). Although Zhou and Yao (2020 ) did not find a direct association, they showed that higher social support was indirectly associated with lower teacher stress due to a better fulfillment of teachers' basic psychological needs, i.e., higher autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Teaching experience, age, and gender

Six studies examined the role of demographic characteristics in teacher stress and burnout [teaching experience: k = 4 ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Carreon et al., 2021 ; Collie, 2021 ; Pressley, 2021 ); age: k = 3 ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Carreon et al., 2021 ; Oducado et al., 2021 ); gender: k= 4 ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Carreon et al., 2021 ; Collie, 2021 ; Oducado et al., 2021 )]. Older and more experienced teachers had higher burnout scores in two studies, while in the other three studies age and teaching experience were not associated with stress and burnout. Studies were inconclusive regarding the role of gender in stress and burnout.

Turnover intention

One study examined the association of burnout and turnover intention, i.e., teachers' intention to quit teaching ( Liu et al., 2021 ). In this study, all three burnout dimensions were associated with higher turnover intention.

Self-care activities and stress reduction programs

One study examined associations between teacher burnout and self-care activities indicating that mindfulness, healthy eating, and exercise were associated with higher accomplishment, while associations with other burnout dimensions were negligible ( Sokal et al., 2020b ). Two intervention studies examined the effects of an inquiry-based stress reduction program (Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ; T1: prior to the pandemic; T2: during the pandemic) and of a program combining stress management strategies and training in technology use for teaching ( Pozo-Rico et al., 2020 ; T1 and T2: during the pandemic). The combined program showed positive effects, indicating a decrease in stress, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization, and an increase in personal accomplishment for the intervention group, while there were no changes in the control group ( Pozo-Rico et al., 2020 ). The inquiry-based stress reduction program showed no differential effects in the intervention group and control group in terms of stress and personal accomplishment (Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ). There was a differential effect in emotional exhaustion, indicating a smaller increase in the intervention group than in the control group (Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ).

The present study sought to provide a systematic overview of the research into stress and burnout among K−12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focused on studies that compared the level of stress and burnout teachers experienced before vs. during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also included studies investigating differences in the levels of stress and burnout experienced by K−12 teachers as compared to individuals employed in other occupational fields. In addition to this, we aimed to identify job and organizational characteristics associated with teacher stress and burnout, but also individual characteristics and activities potentially related to stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a systematic literature search, we identified 17 studies examining stress and burnout in 9,874 K−12 teachers.

As to the question of whether K−12 teachers' stress and burnout increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, only two studies out of 17 reported findings on the extent to which teachers' experienced burnout both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ; control group in Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ). One study found evidence for an increase in lack of accomplishment and depersonalization, but no change in emotional exhaustion ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ; T2: May 2020; Germany). Another study indicated the reverse: that emotional exhaustion increased, but personal accomplishment and stress did not change (control group in Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ; T2: May 2020; Israel). One reason for these different findings in the two studies could be the different demands and resources in the two countries or samples under investigation, i.e., German teachers vs. Israeli teachers. From a theoretical point of view, the findings by Zadok-Gurm an et al. (2021) are in line with the job demands-resources model ( Demerouti et al., 2001 ), which posits that, of the three burnout dimensions, emotional exhaustion develops first, while depersonalization and lack of accomplishment evolve later on. On the other hand, emotional exhaustion is seen as a consequence of work overload, while reduced personal accomplishment is thought to develop when there is a lack of resources ( Maslach et al., 2001 ).

Weißenfels et al. (2021 ) argue that work overload may not have been the key factor in teachers' experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, they claim, teachers were lacking information—especially at the start of the pandemic ( Kim and Asbury, 2020 )—which may have led to reduced levels of personal accomplishment, with teachers creating an emotional distance from their work ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ). It may also be the case that, at the start of the pandemic, teachers may have activated all of their resources to successfully cope with remote teaching, and the negative consequences of greater emotional exhaustion may have only emerged later on ( Kim and Asbury, 2020 ). Last but not least, while remote teaching posed a number of challenges, some teachers may have had a positive experience of more flexible working—and in some respect less strain—finding that they could work effectively from home ( Kim and Asbury, 2020 ).

On the question of whether K−12 teachers have experienced higher levels of stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic than individuals employed in other occupational fields, two studies found almost no differences between stress levels experienced by K−12 teachers in comparison to teachers in preschools and universities ( Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al., 2021 ) and in comparison to managers, executive employees, and other practitioners ( Mari et al., 2021 ). The only difference that emerged was that K−12 teachers' scores on the PSS-subscale of helplessness were higher than those reported by managers.

When interpreting these results, we need to take into account the time of measurement and regional differences. Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al. (2021 ) conducted their study when schools and universities had already reopened. The study presumably did not capture potential differences in the stress levels of teachers in different sectors that may have emerged in response to online teaching. The results of Mari et al. (2021 ) may be limited by the fact that the number of teachers from Southern Italy—which was less affected by the pandemic than Northern Italy—was disproportionately high. The authors did not control for these regional differences and could therefore have underestimated K−12 teachers' actual levels of stress. There were no studies examining differences in burnout levels of K−12 teachers and individuals employed in other occupational fields.

Which job and organizational characteristics relate to K−12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic? Results indicate that school principals' leadership practices are closely associated with teachers' emotional exhaustion ( Collie, 2021 ). Autonomy-thwarting practices, comprising pressure and controlling behaviors, were associated with higher levels of emotional exhaustion in teachers; the association was large in size (ß = 0.46 in a structural equation model, controlling for workload, teachers' personality characteristics, and demographics; Collie, 2021 ). In contrast, supportive practices, comprising empowerment and understanding, fostered workplace buoyancy or the ability to deal with challenges at work. Workplace buoyancy, in turn, contributed to lower levels of stress and burnout ( Collie, 2021 ). In another study, Sokal et al. (2020b ) examined various job demands and resources. Moderate associations only emerged between K−12 teachers' emotional exhaustion and time management, balancing home life and teaching, as well as technology issues (all other bivariate correlations were below 0.30; see also Rabaglietti et al., 2021 for similar findings). Reduced work and the amount of remote teaching were only negligibly related to teachers' stress and burnout ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Collie, 2021 ). Teachers working in rural as compared to urban or suburban schools experienced similar levels of stress and burnout ( Collie, 2021 ; Pressley, 2021 ). Taken together, the studies show that having to quickly prepare materials for online teaching while working from home and managing childcare responsibilities were relevant sources of emotional exhaustion ( Sokal et al., 2020b ). One way school principals can thus support teachers is by avoiding demanding practices and providing a supportive school climate ( Collie, 2021 ).

We now come to the question of which individual characteristics and activities relate to K−12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show that teacher self-efficacy in online learning environments were closely associated with teachers' emotional exhaustion and lack of accomplishment ( Panisoara et al., 2020 ; Sokal et al., 2020a ; Ma et al., 2021 ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ). 4 Beyond cross-sectional findings, teachers experienced a lower increase in these dimensions of burnout during the pandemic when their teaching self-efficacy showed a greater increase ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ). In a similar vein, higher self-efficacy in using digital media was accompanied by a smaller increase in lack of accomplishment, although it was not associated with a change in emotional exhaustion (see also Amri et al., 2020 ; Pressley, 2021 ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ). This is in line with previous research indicating that teachers who perceive the classroom as more controllable will use better instructional strategies, have favorable teaching experiences, and experience less stress and burnout ( Dicke et al., 2014 ). Given that many teachers had to acquire skills in remote teaching practically overnight ( OECD, 2020b ; Reimers and Schleicher, 2020 ), the relevance of teacher self-efficacy in online learning for teacher stress and burnout is comprehensible. In contrast, there was no evidence that attitudes toward e-learning were associated with changes in burnout ( Weißenfels et al., 2021 ; see also mixed evidence in Pressley, 2021 ; but Amri et al., 2020 ). Thus, negative attitudes toward e-learning may not make teachers as susceptible to burnout as low teacher self-efficacy in online teaching.

Cross-sectional evidence indicated that teachers were less likely to experience burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic when they had more favorable attitudes toward change and adaptability ( Sokal et al., 2020a ; Ma et al., 2021 ), higher general self-efficacy, emotional stability, sense of control, and resilience ( Sokal et al., 2020a ; Zhou and Yao, 2020 ; Collie, 2021 ; Liu et al., 2021 ; Rabaglietti et al., 2021 ). These findings are consistent with meta-analyses conducted prior to the pandemic indicating that teachers' personalities—especially a high level of emotional stability—makes them less vulnerable to burnout ( Cramer and Binder, 2015 ; Kim et al., 2019 ). Although it may seem likely that social support would make teachers less susceptible to burnout, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, findings on the role of social support for teacher stress and burnout were contentious ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Sokal et al., 2020b ; Zhou and Yao, 2020 ). Previous research has already shown that the link between social support and burnout is weak (e.g., meta-analysis by Halbesleben, 2006 ). Work-related support, for instance, has been found to be more crucial in reducing burnout than non-work-related support ( Halbesleben, 2006 ; Fiorilli et al., 2019 ). Studies therefore need to operationalize social support in a clear manner in order to disclose the links between social support and burnout.

Teaching experience, age, and gender were not consistently associated with teacher stress and burnout ( Amri et al., 2020 ; Carreon et al., 2021 ; Collie, 2021 ; Oducado et al., 2021 ; Pressley, 2021 ). Differences in the strength of these associations could be explained by the time of data collection and the different countries in which the studies were conducted. Teachers who felt more at risk of getting infected with COVID-19 experienced higher levels of stress and burnout ( Carreon et al., 2021 ; Oducado et al., 2021 ; Pressley, 2021 ). Thus, teachers living in areas that were more affected by the pandemic or teachers with health issues were more likely to suffer from stress and burnout during this period. Finally, findings indicated that teachers experiencing higher levels of burnout had a higher intention of quitting teaching ( Liu et al., 2021 ). Turnover intentions may have been a result of burnout, but may also have existed prior to the pandemic thus impeding teachers' ability to adapt to remote teaching.

One study indicated that self-care activities, such as mindfulness, healthy eating, and exercise, can be helpful in maintaining personal accomplishment, but the associations were small ( Sokal et al., 2020b ). The intervention studies indicate that a program combining stress management and training in technology use can effectively reduce stress and burnout ( Pozo-Rico et al., 2020 ), while stress management training alone may not be sufficient ( Zadok-Gurman et al., 2021 ). Although Zadok-Gurm an et al. (2021) found that emotional exhaustion increased to a lesser extent in the intervention group than in the control group, the effect was most likely due to higher starting values in the intervention group, which they did not control for in their analyses. While these findings are in line with previous research showing that training in instructional strategies may be more effective than stress management training (e.g., Dicke et al., 2015a ), they need to be interpreted cautiously as stress management training programs differ in their effectiveness ( Kröll et al., 2017 ), studies were conducted in different countries (Spain vs. Israel) and the time of measurement differed in both studies (baseline prior to the pandemic in Zadok-Gurm an et al., 2021 ; baseline during the pandemic in Pozo-Rico et al., 2020 ). Nevertheless, Pozo-Rico et al. (2020 ) results are in line with research demonstrating that teachers with high teaching self-efficacy in online learning environments experience less stress and burnout ( Panisoara et al., 2020 ; Sokal et al., 2020a ; Ma et al., 2021 ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ).

Limitations and implications for future research

In terms of the measures used, we found that some studies condensed and adapted self-report measures of teacher stress and burnout in order to, for instance, assess the stress that teachers experienced when using technology for online teaching (e.g., Panisoara et al., 2020 ; Carreon et al., 2021 ; Ma et al., 2021 ). Future studies should put more effort into validating these measures. In addition, 14 out of 17 of the studies used cross-sectional designs, and all studies relied on self-report measures. The lack of longitudinal studies is consistent with the review on teacher burnout by Madigan and Kim (2021) , who found that only four out of 14 studies—conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic—applied a longitudinal study design. Although baseline measures may not be available, because the pandemic could not be foreseen, prospective research could shed light on the longitudinal relationship between teacher stress and burnout and job and organizational characteristics, as well as individual teacher characteristics during the ongoing pandemic.

Future studies should aim to complement ratings of teacher self-efficacy with class-level aggregated ratings of instructional quality that represent a shared perspective from all students in the classroom ( Lüdtke et al., 2009 ). When examining job and organizational characteristics, school-level-aggregated ratings of teaching staff could be insightful (e.g., Kalinowski et al., 2022 ). In line with the job demands-resources model ( Demerouti et al., 2001 ), buffering effects of job resources moderating the negative consequences of demands should also be examined. Moreover, although some of the studies included in this review assessed both individual and organizational characteristics (e.g., Sokal et al., 2020b ; Collie, 2021 ), they did not aim to identify the interplay of these characteristics. This kind of research design could help answer the question of “‘who' gets burned out in ‘which' situations” during a global pandemic ( Chang, 2009 , p. 201). While our review provides a systematic overview on individual and organization characteristics that may be relevant in the development of teacher stress and burnout during the pandemic, it lacks quantitative statistical tests. To test for publication bias and more precisely describe mean effect sizes meta-analyses may be insightful.

Practical implications and conclusion

The present systematic review is based on 17 studies examining stress and burnout in 9,874 K−12 teachers from 20 countries. Most studies focus on the role of individual teacher characteristics for teacher stress and burnout. Studies imply that K−12 teachers' personality, teacher self-efficacy in online teaching, and feeling vulnerable to COVID-19 have been crucial factors in stress and burnout among teachers during the pandemic. On the organizational level, there is some indication that when school principals contribute to a supportive school climate and avoid demanding practices, teachers experience less stress and burnout. In addition, interventions for teachers may potentially be most effective in reducing stress and burnout when they combine stress management and training in technology use. These findings can be seen as important hypotheses that need to be thoroughly examined in intervention studies, using randomized-control designs. Taken together, school principals' leadership coupled with teacher training—aimed at improving stress management and teachers' self-efficacy in online teaching—could help decrease teacher stress and burnout during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author contributions

AW designed and directed the project, conducted the literature search, and took the lead in writing the manuscript. EK was involved in planning the work. AW and EK decided upon inclusion of the initial studies. CH and AW rated the quality of the studies. CH prepared the tables. EK, CH, and MV provided critical feedback and helped shape the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) - Projekt nummer 491466077.

Acknowledgments

We thank Ben Fergusson for his editorial assistance. We would also like to thank Nicola Schattka for her help with preparing the tables.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

1. ^ Cohen's d was calculated for the present review based on the descriptives reported by Zadok-Gurm an et al. (2021) . Correlation between pre- and post-test was not reported. Following the procedure developed by Fukkink and Lont (2007) , we used an estimated correlation of r = 0.5.

2. ^ Cohen's d was calculated for the present review based on the descriptives reported by Mari et al. (2021 ).

3. ^ Agreeableness and conscientiousness were combined into one latent factor, which the authors called “constraint,” and which was positively associated with greater stress and emotional exhaustion, when controlling for the other personality traits, although, the bivariate correlation with emotional exhaustion was negligible.

4. ^ Even though two of the studies ( Sokal et al., 2020a ; Weißenfels et al., 2021 ) surveyed teachers in terms of their self-efficacy without focusing on online learning environments, teachers supposedly reported on their self-efficacy in these online environments (as the measurement took place while teachers were teaching remotely; for a similar suggestion see Weißenfels et al., 2021 ).

5. ^ indicates studies included in the review.

Abel, M. H., and Sewell, J. (1999). Stress and burnout in rural and urban secondary school teachers. J. Educ. Res. 92, 287–293. doi: 10.1080/00220679909597608

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Ahorsu, D. K., Lin, C. Y., Imani, V., Saffari, M., Griffiths, M. D., and Pakpour, A. H. (2020). The fear of COVID-19 scale: development and initial validation. Int. J. Mental Health Addict. 2020, 1–9. doi: 10.1037/t78404-000

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Akbulut, Y. (2009). Investigating underlying components of the ICT indicators measurement scale: the extended version. J. Educ. Comput. Res. 40, 405–427. doi: 10.2190/EC.40.4.b

Aloe, A. M., Shisler, S. M., Norris, B. D., Nickerson, A. B., and Rinker, T. W. (2014). A multivariate meta-analysis of student misbehavior and teacher burnout. Educ. Res. Rev. 12, 30–44. doi: 10.1016/j.edurev.2014.05.003

American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edn. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.

Google Scholar

* , Amri, A., Abidli, Z., Elhamzaoui, M., Bouzaboul, M., Rabea, Z., and Ahami, A. O. T. (2020). Assessment of burnout among primary teachers in confinement during the COVID-19 period in Morocco: case of the Kenitra. Pan Afr. Medi. J. 35, 92. doi: 10.11604/pamj.supp.2020.35.2.24345

An, L., Cong, Z., and Wang, X. (2004). Research of high school students' security and the related factors. Chin. Mental Health J. 18, 717–719.

Asbury, K., Fox, L., Deniz, E., Code, A., and Toseeb, U. (2020). How is COVID-19 affecting the mental health of children with special educational needs and disabilities and their families? J. Autism Dev. Disorders 51, 1772–1780. doi: 10.1007/s10803-020-04577-2

Betoret, F. D., and Artiga, A. G. (2010). Barriers perceived by teachers at work, coping strategies, self-efficacy and burnout. Spanish J. Psychol. 13, 637–654. doi: 10.1017/S1138741600002316

* , Carreon, T. R., Rotas, E., Cahapay, M. B., Garcia, K. A., Amador, R. M., and Anoba, J. L. (2021). Fear of COVID-19 and remote teaching burnout of Philippine K to 12 teachers. Int. J. Educ. Innov. 15, 552–567. doi: 10.46661/ijeri.5853

Chang, M.-L. (2009). An appraisal perspective of teacher burnout: examining the emotional work of teachers. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 21, 193–218. doi: 10.1007/s10648-009-9106-y

Chuang, H.-H., Ho, C.-J., Weng, C.-Y., and Liu, H.-C. (2018). High school students' perceptions of English teachers' knowledge in technology-supported class environments. Asia-Pacific Educ. Res. 27, 197–206. doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0378-1

Cohen, S. (1986). Contrasting the hassles scale and the perceived stress scale. Who's really measuring appraised stress? Am. Psychol. 41, 716–718. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.41.6.716

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., and Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. J. Health Soc. Behav. 24, 385–396. doi: 10.2307/2136404

* , and Collie, R. J. (2021). COVID-19 and teachers' somatic burden, stress, and emotional exhaustion: examining the role of principal leadership and workplace buoyancy. AERA Open 7, 1–15. doi: 10.1177/2332858420986187

Connor, K. M., and Davidson, J. R. T. (2003). Development of a new resilience scale: the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Depres. Anxiety 18, 76–82. doi: 10.1002/da.10113

Cramer, C., and Binder, K. (2015). Zusammenhänge von Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen und Beanspruchungserleben im Lehramt. Ein internationales systematisches review [the relationship between personality traits and burnout among teachers. an international systematic review]. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 18, 101–123. doi: 10.1007/s11618-014-0605-3

Davey, H. M., Barratt, A. L., Butow, P. N., and Deeks, J. J. (2007). A one-item question with a Likert or Visual Analog Scale adequately measured current anxiety. J. Clin. Epidemiol. 60, 356–360. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2006.07.015

Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., and Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). The job demands-resources model of burnout. J. App. Psychol. 86, 499–512. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.499

Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Vardakou, I., and Kantas, A. (2003). The convergent validity of two burnout instruments: a multitrait-multimethod analysis. Eur. J. Psychol. Assessment 19, 12–23. doi: 10.1027/1015-5759.19.1.12

Dicke, T., Elling, J., Schmeck, A., and Leutner, D. (2015a). Reducing reality shock: the effects of classroom management skills training on beginning teachers. Teach. Teacher Educ. 48, 1–12. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2015.01.013

Dicke, T., Parker, P. D., Holzberger, D., Kunina-Habenicht, O., Kunter, M., and Leutner, D. (2015b). Beginning teachers' efficacy and emotional exhaustion: Latent changes, reciprocity, and the influence of professional knowledge. Contemp. Educ. Psychol. 41, 62–72. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.11.003

Dicke, T., Parker, P. D., Marsh, H. W., Kunter, M., Schmeck, A., and Leutner, D. (2014). Self-efficacy in classroom management, classroom disturbances, and emotional exhaustion: a moderated mediation analysis of teacher candidates. J. Educ. Psychol. 106, 569–583. doi: 10.1037/a0035504

Eddy, C. L., Herman, K. C., and Reinke, W. M. (2019). Single-item teacher stress and coping measures: concurrent and predictive validity and sensitivity to change. J. School Psychol. 76, 17–32. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2019.05.001

Edison, S. W., and Geissler, G. L. (2003). Measuring attitudes towards general technology: antecedents, hypotheses and scale development. J. Target. Measurem. Anal. Market. 12, 137–156. doi: 10.1057/palgrave.jt.5740104

Evers, W. J. G., Tomic, W., and Brouwers, A. (2004). Burnout among teachers: students' and teachers' perceptions compared. School Psychol. Int. 25, 131–148. doi: 10.1177/0143034304043670

Fernet, C., Guay, F., Senécal, C., and Austin, S. (2012). Predicting intraindividual changes in teacher burnout: the role of perceived school environment and motivational factors. Teach. Teacher Educ. 28, 514–525. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2011.11.013

Fernet, C., Senécal, C., Guay, F., Marsh, H., and Dowson, M. (2008). The work tasks motivation scale for teachers (WTMST). J. Career Assessment 16, 256–279. doi: 10.1177/1069072707305764

Fiorilli, C., Benevene, P., De Stasio, S., Buonomo, I., Romano, L., Pepe, A., et al. (2019). Teachers' burnout: the role of trait emotional intelligence and social support. Front. Psychol. 10, 2743. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02743

Fossati, A. (2010). Scala Per Lo Stress Percepito [Italian translation of the Perceived Stress Scale]. Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, Laboratory for the Study of Stress, Immunity, and Disease . Available online at: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/psychology/stress-immunity-disease-lab/scales/.doc/italian_pss_10_with_info.doc (accessed March 18, 2022).

Friedman, I. A. (1995). Student behavior patterns contributing to teacher burnout. J. Educ. Res. 88, 281–289. doi: 10.1080/00220671.1995.9941312

Fukkink, R. G., and Lont, A. (2007). Does training matter? A meta-analysis and review of caregiver training studies. Early Childhood Res. Q. 22, 294–311. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2007.04.005

Gierk, B., Kohlmann, S., Kroenke, K., Spangenberg, L., Zenger, M., Brähler, E., et al. (2014). The Somatic Symptom Scale-8 (SSS-8): a brief measure of somatic symptom burden. J. Am. Med. Assoc. Int. Medi. 174, 399–407. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.12179

Goddard, R., O'Brien, P., and Goddard, M. (2006). Work environment predictors of beginning teacher burnout. Br. Educ. Res. J. 32, 857–874. doi: 10.1080/01411920600989511

Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., and Swann, W. B. Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the big-five personality domains. J. Res. Person. 37, 504–528. doi: 10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1

Haddock, C. K., Poston, W. S., Pyle, S. A., Klesges, R. C., Vander Weg, M. W., Peterson, A., et al. (2006). The validity of self-rated health as a measure of health status among young military personnel: evidence from a cross-sectional survey. Health Q. Life Outcomes 4, 57. doi: 10.1186/1477-7525-4-57

Halbesleben, J. R. B. (2006). Sources of social support and burnout: a meta-analytic test of the conservation of resources model. J. App. Psychol. 91, 1134–1145. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.91.5.1134

Hammerstein, S., König, C., Dreisörner, T., and Frey, A. (2021). Effects of COVID-19-related school closures on student achievement – a systematic review. Front. Psychol. 12, 746289. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.746289

Hong, X., Liu, Q., and Zhang, M. (2021). Dual stressors and female pre-school teachers' job satisfaction during the COVID-19: the mediation of work-family conflict. Front. Psychol. 12, 691498. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.691498

Hwang, Y. S., Bartlett, B., Greben, M., and Hand, K. (2017). A systematic review of mindfulness interventions for in-service teachers: A tool to enhance teacher wellbeing and performance. Teach. Teach. Educ. 64, 26–42. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2017.01.015

Iliescu, D., Popa, M., and Dimache, R. (2019). The Romanian adaptation of the international personality item pool: IPIP-Ro. Psihologia Resurselor Umane 13, 83–112.

Jackson, C., Mangtani, P., and Vynnycky, E. (2014). Impact of School Closures on an Influenza Pandemic: Scientific Evidence Base Review. London: Department of Health. Available online at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/316203/School_Closures_Evidence_review.pdf (accessed March 18, 2022).

Kalinowski, E., Jurczok, A., Westphal, A., and Vock, M. (2022). Welche individuellen und institutionellen Faktoren begünstigen die Kooperation von Grundschullehrkräften? [Which individual and institutional factors facilitate collaboration between teachers in primary schools?] Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft. p. 1–31. doi: 10.1007/s11618-022-01081-4

Karasek R. A. Jr. (1979). Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental strain: implications for job redesign. Admin. Sci. Q. 24, 285–308. doi: 10.2307/2392498

Kim, L. E., and Asbury, K. (2020). “Like a rug had been pulled from under you”: the impact of COVID-19 on teachers in England during the first six weeks of the UK lockdown. Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 90, 1062–1083. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12381

Kim, L. E., Jörg, V., and Klassen, R. M. (2019). A meta-analysis of the effects of teacher personality on teacher effectiveness and burnout. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 31, 163–195. doi: 10.1007/s10648-018-9458-2

Kin, T. M., and Kareem, O. A. (2017). Measuring teacher attitudes towards change: an empirical validation. Int. J. Manage. Educ. 11, 437–469. doi: 10.1504/IJMIE.2017.086909

Kröll, C., Doebler, P., and Nüesch, S. (2017). Meta-analytic evidence of the effectiveness of stress management at work. Eur. J. Work Org. Psychol. 26, 677–693. doi: 10.1080/1359432X.2017.1347157

Lazarus, R. S. (1999). Stress and Emotion: A New Synthesis . New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

Lazarus, R. S., and Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping . New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

Lee, S. A. (2020). Coronavirus anxiety scale: a brief mental health screener for COVID-19 related anxiety. Death Stu. 44, 393–401. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2020.1748481

* , Liu, F., Chen, H., Xu, J., Wen, Y., and Fang, T. (2021). Exploring the relationships between resilience and turnover intention in Chinese high school teachers: considering the moderating role of job burnout. Int. J. Environ. Res. Pub. Health 18, 6418. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18126418

Lüdtke, O., Robitzsch, A., Trautwein, U., and Kunter, M. (2009). Assessing the impact of learning environments: how to use student ratings of classroom or school characteristics in multilevel modeling. Contemp. Educ. Psychol. 34, 120–131. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2008.12.001

* , Ma, K., Chutiyami, M., Zhang, Y., and Nicoll, S. (2021). Online teaching self-efficacy during COVID-19: changes, its associated factors and moderators. Educ. Inform. Technol. 26, 6675–6697. doi: 10.1007/s10639-021-10486-3

Madigan, D. J., and Kim, L. E. (2021). Does teacher burnout affect students? A systematic review of its association with academic achievement and student-reported outcomes. Int. J. Educ. Res. 105, 101714. doi: 10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101714

* , Mari, E., Lausi, G., Fraschetti, A., Pizzo, A., Baldi, M., Quaglieri, A., et al. (2021). Teaching during pandemic: a comparison in psychological wellbeing among smart working professions. Sustainability 13, 4850. doi: 10.3390/su13094850

Martin, A. J., and Marsh, H. W. (2008). Workplace and academic buoyancy: psychometric assessment and construct validity amongst school personnel and students. J. Psychoeduc. Assess. 26, 168–184. doi: 10.1177/0734282907313767

Martin, A. J., Nejad, H., Colmar, S., and Liem, G. A. D. (2012). Adaptability: conceptual and empirical perspectives on responses to change, novelty and uncertainty. J. Psychol. Counsellors Schools 22, 58–81. doi: 10.1017/jgc.2012.8

Maslach C Jackson S. E Leiter M. P. (1996). Maslach Burnout Inventory, 3rd Edn . Palo Alto CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

Maslach, C., and Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. J. Org. Behav. 2, 99–113. doi: 10.1002/job.4030020205

Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., and Leiter, M. P. (1986). Maslach Burnout Inventory, 2nd Edn . Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., and Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Ann. Rev. Psychol. 52, 397–422. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.397

Meyers, K., and Thomasson, M. A. (2021). Can pandemics affect educational attainment? evidence from the polio epidemic of 1916. Cliometrica 15, 231–265. doi: 10.1007/s11698-020-00212-3

Mishra, S., and Panda, S. (2007). Development and factor analysis of an instrument to measure faculty attitude towardss e-learning. Asian J. Dist. Educ . 5, 27–33. Available online at: https://www.learntechlib.org/p/185134/

Mota, A. I., Lopes, J., and Oliveira, C. (2021). Burnout in Portuguese teachers: a systematic review. Eur. J. Educ. Res. 10, 693–703. doi: 10.12973/eu-jer.10.2.693

* , Oducado, R. M., Rabacal, J., Moralista, R., and Tamdang, K. (2021). Perceived stress due to COVID-19 pandemic among employed professional teachers. Int. J. Educ. Res. Innov. 15, 305–316. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.3743860

OECD. (2020a). TALIS 2018 Results: Vol. 2. Teachers and School Leaders as Valued Professionals . Paris: OECD.

OECD. (2020b). PISA 2018 Results: Vol. 5. Effective Policies, Successful Schools . Paris: OECD.

OECD. (2022a). Access to Computers From Home (Indicator) . OECD.

OECD. (2022b). Internet Access (Indicator) . OECD.

* , Ozamiz-Etxebarria, N., Berasategi Santxo, N., Idoiaga Mondragon, N., and Dosil Santamaría, M. (2021). The psychological state of teachers during the COVID-19 crisis: the challenge of returning to face-to-face teaching. Front. Psychol. 11, 620718. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.620718

* , Panisoara, I. O., Lazar, I., Panisoara, G., Chirca, R., and Ursu, A. S. (2020). Motivation and continuance intention towards online instruction among teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic: the mediating effect of burnout and technostress. Int. J. Environ. Res. Pub. Health 17, 8002. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17218002

Pedrozo-Pupo, J. C., Pedrozo-Cortés, M. J., and Campo-Arias, A. (2020). Perceived stress associated with COVID-19 epidemic in Colombia: An online survey. Cadernos de Saúde Pública 36, e00090520. doi: 10.1590/0102-311x00090520

Pfitzner-Eden, F., Thiel, F., and Horsley, J. (2014). An adapted measure of teacher self-efficacy for preservice teachers: exploring its validity across two countries. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychol. 28, 83–92. doi: 10.1024/1010-0652/a000125

* , Pozo-Rico, T., Gilar-Corb,í, R., Izquierdo, A., and Castejón, J.-L. (2020). Teacher training can make a difference: tools to overcome the impact of COVID-19 on primary schools. An experimental study. Int. J. Environ. Res. Pub. Health 17, 8633. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17228633

* , and Pressley, T. (2021). Factors contributing to teacher burnout during COVID-19. Educ. Res. 50, 325–327. doi: 10.3102/0013189X211004138

Price, J. L. (2001). Reflections on the determinants of voluntary turnover. Int. J. Manpower 22, 600–624. doi: 10.1108/EUM0000000006233

Putwain, D. W., and von der Embse, N. P. (2019). Teacher self-efficacy moderates the relations between imposed pressure from imposed curriculum changes and teacher stress. Educ. Psychol. 39, 51–64. doi: 10.1080/01443410.2018.1500681

* , Rabaglietti, E., Lattke, L. S., Tesauri, B., Settanni, M., and De Lorenzo, A. (2021). A balancing act during Covid-19: teachers' self-efficacy, perception of stress in the distance learning experience. Front. Psychol. 12, 644108. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.644108

Reimers, F. M., and Schleicher, A. (2020). Schooling Disrupted, Schooling Rethought: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Changing Education. OECD Publishing . Available online at: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=133_133390-1rtuknc0hiandtitle=Schooling-disrupted-schooling-rethought-How-the-Covid-19-pandemic-is-changing-education (accessed March 18, 2022).

Robinia, K. A. (2008). Online Teaching Self-Efficacy of Nurse Faculty Teaching in Public, Accredited Nursing Programs in the State of Michigan . Doctoral dissertation, Retrieved from ScholarWorks at Western Michigan University database (No . 811) (Kalamazoo, MI).

Ruiz, F. J., García-Martín, M. B., Suárez-Falcón, J. C., and Odriozola-González, P. (2017). The hierarchical factor structure of the spanish version of depression anxiety and stress scale−21. Int. J. Psychol. Psychol. Ther. 17, 97–105.

Schwarzer, R., and Jerusalem, M. (1995). “Generalized self-efficacy scale,” in Measures in Health Psychology: A User's Portfolio , eds J. Weinman, S. Wright, and M. Johnston (Windsor: NFER-Nelson), 35–37.

Seidman, S. A., and Zager, J. (1986). The teacher burnout scale. Educ. Res. Q. 11, 26–33.

Sheldon, K. M., and Niemiec, C. P. (2006). It's not just the amount that counts: balanced need satisfaction also affects well-being. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 91, 331–341. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.91.2.331

Sibilia, L., Schwarzer, R., and Jerusalem, M. (1995). Italian adaptation of the General Self-Efficacy Scale [Resource document]. Ralf Schwarzer at Freie Universität Berlin . Available online at: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/%7Ehealth/italian.htm (accessed March 18, 2022).

Skaalvik, E. M., and Skaalvik, S. (2010). Teacher self-efficacy and teacher burnout: a study of relations. Teach. Teacher Educ. 26, 1059–1069. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2009.11.001

Skaalvik, E. M., and Skaalvik, S. (2011). Teacher job satisfaction and motivation to leave the teaching profession: relations with school context, feeling of belonging, and emotional exhaustion. Teach. Teacher Educ. 27, 1029–1038. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2011.04.001

Skaalvik, E. M., and Skaalvik, S. (2016). Teacher stress and teacher self-efficacy as predictors of engagement, emotional exhaustion, and motivation to leave the teaching profession. Creative Educ. 7, 1785–1799. doi: 10.4236/ce.2016.713182

Skaalvik, E. M., and Skaalvik, S. (2017). Dimensions of teacher burnout: relations with potential stressors at school. Soc. Psychol. Educ. 20, 775–790. doi: 10.1007/s11218-017-9391-0

* , Sokal, L. J., Eblie Trudel, L., and Babb, J. (2020a). Canadian teachers' attitudes toward change, efficacy, and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. Int. J. Educ. Res. Open 1, 100016. doi: 10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100016

* , Sokal, L. J., Eblie Trudel, L. G., and Babb, J. C. (2020b). Supporting teachers in times of change: the job demands-resources model and teacher burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. Int. J. Contemp. Educ. 3, 67–74. doi: 10.11114/ijce.v3i2.4931

Thorell, L. B., Skoglund, C., De la Pena, A. G., Baeyens, D., Fuermaier, A. B. M., Groom, M. J., et al. (2021). Parental experiences of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic: differences between seven European countries and between children with and without mental health conditions. Eur. Child Adolesc. Psychiat. 2021, dsy57. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/dsy57

Tschannen-Moran, M., and Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2001). Teacher efficacy: capturing an elusive construct. Teach. Teacher Educ. 17, 783–805. doi: 10.1016/S0742-051X(01)00036-1

UNESCO (2021). Education: From Disruption to Recovery. UNESCO . Available online at: https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse#durationschoolclosures (accessed March 18, 2022).

Wang, G.-X., Liu, C.-J., and Wu, X.-C. (2003). Development of educator burnout inventory. Psychol. Dev. Educ. 3, 82–86.

PubMed Abstract | Google Scholar

Wang, X., Tan, S. C., and Li, L. (2020). Technostress in university students' technology-enhanced learning: an investigation from multidimensional person-environment misfit. Comput. Hum. Behav. 105, 106208. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2019.106208

* , Weißenfels, M., Klopp, E., and Perels, F. (2021). Changes in teacher burnout and self-efficacy during the COVID-19 pandemic: interrelations and e-learning variables related to change. Front. Educ. 6, 736992. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/54wub

Westphal, A., Becker, M., Vock, M., Maaz, K., Neumann, M., and McElvany, N. (2016). The link between teacher-assigned grades and classroom socioeconomic composition: The role of classroom behavior, motivation, and teacher characteristics. Contemp. Educ. Psychol. 46, 218–227. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2016.06.004

Wu, B., and Chen, X. (2017). Continuance intention to use MOOCs: integrating the technology acceptance model (TAM) and task technology fit (TTF) model. Comput. Hum. Behav. 67, 221–232. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2016.10.028

* , Zadok-Gurman, T., Jakobovich, R., Dvash, E., Zafrani, K., Rolnik, B., Ganz, A. B., et al. (2021). Effect of Inquiry Based Stress Reduction (IBSR) intervention on well-being, resilience and burnout of teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Int. J. Environ. Res. Pub. Health 18, 3689. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18073689

Zhen, R., Quan, L., and Zhou, X. (2018). How does social support relieve depression among flood victims? The contribution of feelings of safety, self-disclosure, and negative cognition. J. Affective Disord. 229, 186–192. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2017.12.087

* , Zhou, X., and Yao, B. (2020). Social support and acute stress symptoms (ASSs) during the COVID-19 outbreak: deciphering the roles of psychological needs and sense of control. Eur. J. Psychotraumatol. 11, 1779494. doi: 10.1080/20008198.2020.1779494

Keywords: burnout, stress, COVID-19, pandemic, K−12 teachers, remote teaching

Citation: Westphal A, Kalinowski E, Hoferichter CJ and Vock M (2022) K−12 teachers' stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review. Front. Psychol. 13:920326. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.920326

Received: 14 April 2022; Accepted: 05 August 2022; Published: 02 September 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Westphal, Kalinowski, Hoferichter and Vock. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Andrea Westphal, andrea.westphal@uni-greifswald.de

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

How much do teachers struggle with stress and burnout?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, seth gershenson and seth gershenson associate professor, school of public affairs - american university, research fellow - institute for the study of labor (iza) @sethgershenson stephen holt stephen holt assistant professor of public administration and policy - suny albany @stevebholt.

February 8, 2022

There’s long been a perception—even before COVID-19—that schoolteachers are perpetually stressed and on the verge of burning out. Teaching is, without question, a challenging profession. The nature of the work is uniquely challenging, and many facets of the job are outside of teachers’ control—namely, the experiences that students bring to class. And those facets that teachers can control, like lesson preparation and good classroom management, require long hours of managing emotions during the workday and extra, uncompensated effort at night.

Stories in popular media frequently tell these stories with a narrative arc that portrays teaching as a Sisyphean task. One such story , “Hey, New Teachers, It’s OK To Cry In Your Car,” caught our attention years ago due to the vivid description of a rookie teacher hitting her breaking point just a couple months into the school year. Listening to the story, we wondered if teaching really differed from other professions in terms of mental health issues, or if everyone’s similarly stressed out in an increasingly fast-paced, cynical world.

Exploring perception and reality

Does the perception that teachers are uniquely stressed out match the reality? Has mental health worsened over time? And how are trends in mental health different for teachers than similar nonteachers? With Rui Wang of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and support from the Spencer Foundation, we answered these questions .

We use nationally representative survey data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY) that tracks two cohorts of young adults as they age. The NLSY 79 sample includes roughly 13,000 respondents who were aged 14-22 when first interviewed in 1979; it assessed mental health in follow-up interviews in 1997, and at ages 40 and 50 for participants. The NLSY 97 sample includes roughly 9,000 respondents aged 12-17 when first interviewed in 1997; it assessed mental health in five different follow-up interviews spanning 2004 and 2015.

With these survey responses, we establish some basic facts about teachers’ mental health:

• In the 1979 cohort, women who became teachers had similar mental health to college-educated nonteachers prior to entering the profession. This suggests differences between teachers’ and nonteachers’ mental health are not due to pre-existing differences. We find no evidence that women with better (or worse) mental health than their peers opt for teaching as a profession.
• While teaching, educators appear to enjoy slightly better mental health, on average, than their nonteaching, college-educated peers. This is not to say that teachers experience no stress, but that their stress levels are no worse—and perhaps even better—than college-educated women in other professions.
• Regarding changes over time, in the 1997 cohort, teachers self-report worse mental health, on average, than their counterparts in the 1979 cohort. Yet, there is no significant difference between teachers’ and nonteachers’ mental health measures in the 1997 cohort—so it appears everyone has more stressors over time, and the decline in mental health is not unique to teaching.

These findings suggest that concerns about mental health, stress, burnout, and work-life balance are universal, and not unique (or uniquely pressing) in the teaching profession. A team at University College London has been studying similar questions in Europe and reached similar conclusions. This doesn’t mean that we should ignore teachers’ concerns, of course. Everyone needs to be in good mental and physical health to do their job well. And in the case of teaching, there’s a lot we can do to ease their workload, boost their morale, and provide supports that enable teachers to be their best selves in the classroom.

Teacher stress and mental health in the 2020s

A major limitation is that all of this research predates the pandemic. Alongside their role as educators, COVID-19 put teachers on the frontlines of managing ever-changing public health guidance and forced an abrupt pivot to remote instruction for prolonged periods of time. The dual burden has re-ignited concerns about teachers’ mental health, workloads, and what this means for the future of the teaching force.

As the pandemic and efforts to control it continue, teachers face unprecedented work-related stress, for sure. Recently, a survey released by the Alberta Teachers’ Association made headlines with the striking result that one-third of surveyed teachers said they were not sure they’d return to the classroom next school year. In the U.S. context, a recent survey conducted by the RAND Corporation finds a notable increase (almost 50%) in the share of teachers who say they might leave the profession at the end of the current school year, compared to pre-pandemic survey results. In addition to concerns about mass departures, stress hinders the effectiveness of those who remain in the profession. Protecting and maintaining a robust workforce of effective teachers necessitates helping teachers in developing the tools and skills for managing workplace stress. But first, we need to understand the sources of workplace stress.

As if keeping schools operational during a pandemic wasn’t stressful enough, keep in mind that teachers have had to confront the ripple effects of extreme political polarization in the U.S. in recent years as well. Teachers now find themselves in the center of conflicts over mask and vaccine mandates,  how to teach about racial issues in social studies and history, and a nonstop cycle of current events that continue to raise the salience of both deep partisan divisions and racial inequities.

The need to address these controversial topics with students, with increasing interference from parents, has undoubtedly made an already difficult job that much more challenging. And, since public schools are a safety net institution in the U.S.—often providing children multiple meals per day and their primary access to technology—teachers, especially those in preschool and day-care centers , have also been tasked with helping students navigate pandemic impacts on basic needs while experiencing their own pandemic-related hardships. In short, America’s contentious political climate and ongoing pandemic have simultaneously increased teachers’ workloads—and work-related stress.

New podcast turns spotlight onto teachers’ workloads

To help parents, school leaders, policymakers, and teachers understand and confront these challenges, we created a five-episode podcast called “ Mind the Teacher ,” with support from the Spencer Foundation and American University’s School of Public Affairs. In it, we speak to a range of experts including educators, researchers, and journalists about identifying and addressing problems related to teachers’ mental health.

Our main takeaway is that mental health is an important, and too often overlooked, aspect of our lives. This is true for everyone: teachers and nonteachers, parents and students. The global pandemic has shone a spotlight on the importance of, and inequities in, mental health. It’s also made the broader public, including parents, more aware of the challenges that teachers face, and the hard work they do, on a daily basis. While mental health concerns are not unique to teachers, teachers play a hugely important role in society, and their concerns must be addressed.

There’s a lot that school leaders, policymakers, and community stakeholders can do to support teachers. Some of these lessons come from the general psychology literature on workplace mental health, some come from listening to teachers, and some are just common sense.

There’s no silver bullet here. Rather, our reading of the literature suggests a two-pronged approach , with both individual-facing interventions and organizational-level changes. Teacher-directed interventions may include increased pay or programs that provide free counseling. Other teacher-facing interventions that have been shown to lift teacher morale include mindfulness training , peer mentorship, and coaching programs . School leadership might consider allowing teachers more autonomy, input on policy issues, planning and preparation time, and paid personal/mental health days. Decision-makers can free up valuable teaching capacity by providing grading assistance, reducing class sizes, and employing more counselors, social workers, and supervisory administrators.

At the organizational level, interventions should focus on quality, supportive leadership, access to free or affordable health care (including mental health care), and systematic policies to ease teachers’ workloads. And leadership should recognize racial and socioeconomic disparities and design support systems that alleviate the historical stresses on Black and other marginalized teachers.

Ultimately, many aspects of workplace stress stem from anxiety about being effective at work. Teachers, like many other professionals, want to be effective in their jobs and suffer from increased stress, anxiety, and depression when they know they aren’t at their best or are not receiving needed support. Both the individual- and organization-level approaches outlined here share a recognition that teachers’ mental health is inextricably linked to feeling supported and effective in the classroom—and that means giving teachers the dedicated time, space, and resources they need.

At the end of the day, public schools play a fundamentally important role in society, and teachers play a fundamentally important role within schools. It’s a difficult job made even tougher by the pandemic. We should fully support teachers and their mental health, as they can’t do their best work—and ensure that our students reach their full potential—when they’re suffering from chronic fatigue, pressure, and stress.

Authors’ note: If you’ve read this far, we hope that you’ll give “ Mind the Teacher ” a listen. All stakeholders should find this to be a useful resource. Episodes are available on Apple and Stitcher , and can also be streamed from American University’s website ; the latter also offers transcripts and links to the research referred to in each episode.

Related Content

Daphna Bassok, Justin B. Doromal

January 5, 2022

Diana Quintero

January 25, 2019

K-12 Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Thinley Choden

May 3, 2024

Ghulam Omar Qargha, Rachel Dyl, Sreehari Ravindranath, Nariman Moustafa, Erika Faz de la Paz

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Rebecca Winthrop, Sweta Shah

May 2, 2024

Addressing Teacher Burnout: Causes, Symptoms, and Strategies

American teachers have markedly less time to prepare lessons, collaborate with colleagues, and assess student work than educators in other countries. Instead of a balance between time spent with students and preparatory activities, American educators have relatively limited time to engage in work key to successful teaching. Teaching loads can require educators to spend 39 percent more time with students than teachers spend outside of the United States, according to the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). This lopsided distribution of time places extraordinary pressure on American teachers. Insufficient time to complete tasks integral to successful teaching and a host of other stressful conditions often lead to exhaustion. Today, 50 percent of teachers consider quitting, naming stress as one of the primary reasons. To address this crisis, leaders in education must find strategies to combat teacher burnout and build supportive teaching environments.

What Is Teacher Burnout?

Teachers confront significant challenges. They must adapt curricula to a wide range of learning styles, manage shifting education policies, attend to students with special needs, and juggle administrative work. In addition, many of our greatest social ills show up in their classrooms. So, what happens when teachers who already contend with so much also experience unsupportive work environments?

Many experience teacher burnout, hitting their limit in dealing with their work’s daily challenges. It occurs after prolonged exposure to poorly managed emotional and interpersonal job stress.

Consequences of Teacher Burnout

Over time, teacher burnout can lead to a variety of responses. The World Health Organization describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon characterized by three main attributes:

• Exhaustion . When teachers experience burnout, they can feel depleted of energy and too exhausted to continue with their work.
• Cynicism . Teachers who have reached a state of burnout can begin to feel mentally detached from their jobs. Their feelings about the profession can turn negative and cynical.
• Inefficacy . Teacher burnout also leads to feelings of incompetence or ineffectiveness.

Causes of Teacher Burnout

Teachers confront disheartening experiences that can lead to fatigue, anxiety, and depression. Left unmanaged, these symptoms can result in teacher burnout. Some of the causes of teacher burnout include:

Poor Funding

Many districts and schools lack sufficient funding for updated materials, technology, and staff. This places a huge burden on teachers, who must make do with insufficient books and supplies while managing high teacher-to-student ratios. Over time, this burden can leave teachers feeling hopeless and ill-equipped to address achievement gaps and meet students’ needs.

Education leaders must advocate for better school funding and, in the meantime, find ways to cut waste and manage their budgets so schools are as well-stocked and staffed as possible.

High Emotional Demands

In addition to educating students, teachers must care for students’ emotional needs, which can be emotionally demanding. Teachers often feel the very future of a generation rests on their shoulders. If a work environment lacks the support needed to fulfill this responsibility, teachers can understandably feel overwhelmed.

Additionally, teachers frequently find themselves supporting students who have experienced trauma. For example, teachers are likely to be among the first to notice signs of child abuse in a student. As mandated reporters, the law requires teachers to inform authorities.

Such experiences and others in which teachers have no control over the tragic events in their students’ home lives can prove harrowing. Ultimately, teachers can experience secondary trauma when they help students going through difficult times.

Education leaders need to provide teachers with the tools to endure the weight of the emotional demands of their role. For example, they can offer training sessions that give formal instruction on developing emotional skills such as:

• Accurate emotional recognition
• Understanding of the causes and consequences of one’s emotions
• Comfortable expression of emotions
• Effective regulation of emotions

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence research has shown that teachers with developed emotional skills experience less burnout.

Inadequate Preparation

All too often, schools put teachers in situations they are adequately prepared to handle. For example, administrators may require educators to teach outside of their subject area, or they may assign students with learning and behavioral challenges to teachers who lack the necessary training to meet their needs. Such scenarios not only prevent students from learning but also prevent teachers from feeling accomplished, which can cause burnout.

Education leaders must ensure teachers get meaningful professional development that prepares them to deal with behavior issues, new education policies, educational technology, and other obstacles. Additionally, administrators must mindfully assign responsibilities that align with a teacher’s preparation and experience.

Challenging Teaching Situations

Educators face increasingly difficult teaching situations that can lead to burnout. These challenges range from policies that tie teacher evaluations to standardized exams that don’t accurately reflect student learning to transitions to distance learning during the pandemic.

For example, with virtual learning, many teachers are bombarded with parent emails while also trying to direct students who can’t navigate online learning platforms. As a result, teachers often feel obligated to work all hours of the day and night, struggling to find a healthy work-life balance. Additionally, challenging student behavior has become more severe and frequent, leaving teachers to manage difficult situations.

Education leaders need to consider how policies regarding teacher evaluations and standardized exams affect teachers and also mindfully advocate for programs that boost teacher morale. They can support teachers by setting boundaries on their behalf, such as by communicating clearly to parents what teacher work hours are and putting limits on teachers’ obligations.

Finally, leaders can continue to deliver specific training that prepares teachers to respond to individual challenges as they arise.

Teacher Burnout Statistics

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that more than 270,000 teachers have left the profession each year since 2016 and projects this rate of departure to continue through 2026.

While the BLS attributes some of the departures to retirement, it classifies more than half of them—in every category of teacher, from kindergarten to special education—as “occupational transfers.” That percentage equates to hundreds of thousands of teachers leaving their careers in education for work in another field each year. One must wonder why, considering all the preparation required to become a teacher in the first place.

With 90 percent of the demand for teachers coming from teachers exiting the profession for reasons unrelated to retirement, leaders must look more closely at teacher burnout and how to keep teachers in the classroom.

Teacher Burnout’s Disproportionate Impact on High-Poverty Schools

The National Center for Education Statistics projects school enrollment will grow 2 percent by 2028. The combination of growing student populations and significant numbers of departing teachers has set off alarm bells for education leaders, who are now searching for ways to curb the attrition. Even more distressing, this attrition disproportionately affects disadvantaged or marginalized students.

Research has consistently shown that the highest teacher attrition rates occur in high-poverty schools and schools made up largely of students of color. For example, as of 2016, Title I schools (schools where at least 35 percent of students are low-income) had turnover rates 50 percent higher than non-Title I schools. The churn and instability that teacher burnout causes intensifies the challenges marginalized students experience and can contribute to a widening achievement gap.

Signs of Teacher Burnout

Teachers often don’t recognize they’re on the road to burning out before they hit a threshold of no return. However, early identification of the following symptoms, which teachers may experience to varying degrees, can help education leaders implement intervention strategies at a point when they will be most effective.

Constant Fatigue

Excessive workloads and emotional strain can lead to fatigue. However, in a manageable situation, this fatigue should ebb and flow. Three-day weekends and seasonal vacations can go a long way in renewing energy. Unfortunately, for overburdened teachers, fatigue can remain a constant. It can interrupt sleep, cause irritability, and even affect eating habits.

Teachers may wonder about the effectiveness of a lesson or self-critique their work. This is part of the growing process and key to development. However, teachers heading for burnout may begin to question whether they are cut out for teaching altogether. They may not only doubt the strength of an individual lesson or unit but also wonder if anything they do has value.

When teachers feel overwhelmed by their work, they may withdraw in several ways. For example, they may pass on social gatherings with colleagues or stop joining other teachers for lunch. They may also take mental health days more often. They may participate less in faculty and department meetings and cut back on attending optional school events after hours, such as athletic competitions and school plays.

Burnout can lead teachers to stop collaborating with their peers. Burned-out teachers often feel little inspiration to share lessons, visit their peers’ classrooms, or engage in email correspondence. When they do communicate with their peers, the purpose is usually to complain about students, parents, school policies, and administration. They often struggle to see anything positive about their surroundings.

A Loss of Inspiration

Most teachers start their careers full of inspiration. Driven to make a difference, they believe in their ability to effect change and feel motivated to dive in. Teacher burnout quashes this inspiration and drive. Rather than feeling excited to meet new students at the beginning of the year, burned-out teachers feel dread about the things that might go wrong. Instead of feeling confident in their ability to make a difference in students’ lives, they may feel like they are fighting a hopeless battle.

How to Prevent Teacher Burnout

Solving teacher burnout cannot be reduced to calls for teacher resilience or encouraging self-care. Such responses seem to suggest teachers experiencing burnout lack the grit to persevere. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth for the vast majority of teachers.

Stripping teachers of their autonomy, as well as imposing standardization and high-stakes exams, can eat away at the rewards and gratification of teaching. Education leaders must examine such trends and find ways to fortify the rewards of teaching if they hope to prevent teacher burnout.

Instead of looking at teacher burnout as an individual problem, leaders in education must shift their focus to assess the problem as a systemic, institutional, or policy-based issue.

Though teachers from high-poverty schools disproportionately make up burned-out teachers, educators from high-performing schools can also feel demoralized. They report serious frustration and confusion dealing with administrative work that often gobbles up unreasonable amounts of time that could be better spent.

For example, many teachers find themselves forced to use proprietary software bought by a district when creating lesson plans or keeping records. While sometimes helpful, such district decisions often prove burdensome, creating excessive data entry tasks and diverting teachers’ attention away from more meaningful and pressing work. Such a frustration, piled on top of others, can contribute to teachers’ sense of defeat.

Increase Teacher Autonomy

Giving teachers more autonomy can improve job satisfaction and retention. The United Kingdom’s National Foundation for Educational Research recently identified strong links between teacher autonomy and retention. Its findings suggest that involving teachers in activities that honor their independence and bolster their sense of feeling respected can significantly affect their morale and motivate them to stay.

For example, rather than imposing goals on teachers, school leaders can involve teachers in goal setting. Additionally, education leaders can consider how to give teachers more control over the curricula they select and the content they teach.

Engage Teachers in the Right Conversations

While policy shifts can improve the climate teachers work in, schools can make important moves to address and prevent teacher burnout. Author of Demoralized: Why Teachers Leave the Profession They Love and How They Can Stay , Doris Santoro explains the value of certain types of conversations between school leaders and teachers. Santoro recommends school leaders initiate conversations about good work, including:

• What good work looks like
• Obstacles to achieving good work
• What’s needed for good work
• Immediate shifts to removing obstacles to good work

Santoro recommends school leaders get past simply following policy. Rather, she encourages district and school administrators to respond with flexibility and commit to deep engagement with teachers about the issues preventing them from achieving their teaching goals and feeling rewarded.

Build Teachers’ Coping Skills

Education leaders can help teachers manage their stress. With the right support and guidance, teachers can avoid the hopelessness and emotional drain that often leads to teacher burnout.

School leaders can guide teachers to modify their responses to the challenges they confront. Often, teachers enter the field full of anticipation and hope. When confronted by some of the harsh realities of teaching, they can easily fall into despair. However, with the right coping mechanisms, teachers can adjust the responses that fuel negative feelings.

Workshops, counseling, and training sessions can direct teachers to adopt strategies that allow them to reframe issues and compartmentalize difficulties. This approach can make a big difference in avoiding teacher burnout.

Address Symptoms of Teacher Burnout

Teacher burnout does not appear overnight. This means education leaders can institute programs that address the symptoms that lead to it and hopefully prevent teachers from reaching a breaking point.

First, teachers need to trust that school administration will take steps to address their symptoms. However, if teachers see no evidence that they can expect help—or even worse, if they suspect reporting their symptoms will result in less autonomy or diminished faith in their abilities—they will have no reason to share their struggles.

Ways to successfully address symptoms that lead to burnout include:

Implementing Responsive Policies to Teacher Burnout

Schools can offer clear policies and procedures about reporting teacher burnout. They should also provide information about the care available to teachers who are struggling with it.

Keeping Open Lines of Communication

Teachers experiencing symptoms that lead to burnout should receive attention from administrators or people in a position to take direct action in response.

Giving Teachers Choices About Teacher Burnout Care

Teachers know their circumstances best. School leaders should give them choices with regard to the care they receive.

Staying Vigilant

School leaders should be on the lookout for symptoms that lead to burnout among their faculty. This awareness can allow them to intervene while there is still time to make a difference.

The Effect of teacher Burnout on Students

When teachers lose their sense of purpose, feel burdened by fatigue, and withdraw from their work, students will likely feel the effect. Not surprisingly, research indicates teacher burnout negatively impacts students.

First, teacher burnout and attrition go hand in hand. According to the National Education Association, the loss of a teacher during the school year is like losing up to 72 instructional days—almost half the school year. This experience causes students to fall behind and significantly disrupts learning.

Several studies have found that teacher turnover does not solely impact the individual students who lose their teachers. Research has repeatedly shown that high turnover affects the achievement of all students in a school.

Even when teachers experiencing burnout stay on, students pay a price. Teachers overwhelmed by stress use less effective teacher strategies. This affects the clarity of their instruction and classroom management. It also results in less stimulating classroom environments.

A study in the Journal of Educational Psychology found that teachers experiencing burnout at the beginning of the school year had notably worse classroom management by the spring than other teachers. Their classrooms also suffered from significant student disruptions.

A study from the University of British Columbia also found that the students of teachers reporting burnout had elevated levels of stress hormones, suggesting that teachers inadvertently pass their stress on to students.

Learn How to Become an Education Leader and Tackle Teacher Burnout

Addressing teacher burnout means more than responding to it after the fact. Education leaders must prioritize eliminating the causes of teacher burnout and implement solutions that help teachers cope with stress and build supportive work environments that boost morale.

Explore how American University’s online Master of Education in Education Policy and Leadership and online Doctor of Education in Education Policy and Leadership programs equip educators with the skills needed to tackle teacher burnout.

Data Literacy for Teachers: Bridging the Gap Between Education Policy Makers and Educators

Teacher Retention: How Education Leaders Prevent Turnover

Why Do Teachers Strike? Understanding How Policy Makers Can Help

Applied Education Systems, “The 7 Best Ways to Avoid Teacher Burnout in 2020”

The Atlantic, “The Ticking Clock of Teacher Burnout”

Classcraft, “4 Signs of Teacher Burnout and Ways to Deal With Them”

CNBC, “50% of Teachers Surveyed Say They’ve Considered Quitting, Blaming Pay, Stress and Lack of Respect”

Education Finance and Policy, “The Consequences of Leaving School Early: The Effects of Within-Year and End-of-Year Teacher Turnover”

Education Policy Analysis Archives, “Understanding Teacher Shortages: An Analysis of Teacher Supply and Demand in the United States”

Education Week Teacher, “How Teachers’ Stress Affects Students: A Research Roundup”

Edutopia, “Curbing Teacher Burnout During the Pandemic”

The Graide Network, “The Impact of Teacher Turnover on Student Learning”

The Graide Network, “Teacher Burnout Solutions & Prevention—How to Retain Talented Educators”

Greater Good Magazine, “How to Support Teachers’ Emotional Needs Right Now”

Insider, “Teachers Are Seeing Their Colleagues Leave the Profession at an Alarming Rate, and This Might Be Why”

Journal of Educational Psychology, “Teacher-Child Relationships, Classroom Climate, and Children’s Social-Emotional and Academic Development”

National Center for Education Statistics, Enrollment Trends

NEA News, “Teacher Burnout or Demoralization? What’s the Difference and Why It Matters”

SecEd, “Retention: The Vital Role of Teacher Autonomy”

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Projections for Teachers: How Many Are Leaving the Occupation?”

Waterford.org, “Teacher Burnout: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How You Can Prevent End-of-Year Burnout”

World Health Organization, “Burn-Out an ‘Occupational Phenomenon’: International Classification of Diseases”

Request Information

Cookie Acknowledgement

This website uses cookies to collect information to improve your browsing experience. Please review our Privacy Statement for more information.

• Administration
• Toggle Search
• Find People

Show simple item record

The Relationship Between Teacher Burnout and Principal Leadership Style

Files in this item.

Change the Workplace, Not the Person, to Fight Burnout

• Share article

To the Editor:

In recent years, especially since the pandemic, it seems that “burnout” has joined the lexicon of buzzwords and acronyms that pervade the teaching profession. (“ How I’m Keeping Ahead of Burnout: 4 Tips for Teachers ,” Feb. 20, 2024).

In their book, The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs , psychologists Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter define burnout as “crushing exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and alienation, and a sense of ineffectiveness.” This is certainly rampant in the teacher workforce. As our awareness of this phenomenon and its contributors grow, research is now shifting in support of the position that burnout is not an issue with the individual but rather the conditions of the workplace.

Maslach and Leiter cite six areas where workers can be in a mismatch with their workplace: workload, control, rewards, community, fairness, and values. These workplace conditions vary from district to district and school building to school building. It is this uniqueness that prevents research from being able to provide one prescription to cure burnout. Further complicating the picture are expectations contributing to burnout that women teachers in particular may face from society, colleagues, and leaders.

While one can appreciate tips to help teachers navigate this experience, it is more appropriate now to investigate the workplace conditions that allow burnout to fester. Given the challenges in attracting and retaining teachers in classrooms across the country, we can no longer blame the victim.

Kim Kneller Science Teacher Allentown, Pa.

How to Submit

Sign up for edweek update, edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Understanding the factors affecting teachers’ burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study

Contributed equally to this work with: Orly Shimony, Yael Malin

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration

Affiliation School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Seymour Fox School of Education, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

Roles Formal analysis, Methodology

Roles Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

• Orly Shimony, 
• Yael Malin, 
• Haya Fogel-Grinvald, 
• Thomas P. Gumpel, 

• Published: December 30, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279383
• Reader Comments

During the COVID-19 pandemic, which enforced social distancing and isolation, teachers were required to handle multiple challenges related to their work, including dealing with remote teaching, in addition to personal, medical and financial challenges. The goal of the current research was to examine factors that contributed to professional burnout and commitment to work among teachers during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of 344 elementary school teachers in Israel completed online self-report questionnaires, including assessments of stressors, anxiety, resilience, self-efficacy beliefs, and coping strategies. Structured Equation Modeling [SEM] was used to examine the contribution of these factors to professional burnout and commitment.

The gaps between needed and received support had a direct effect on teachers’ burnout and commitment, and an indirect effect through anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs. Stress relating to remote teaching and support-gaps regarding remote teaching were the most significant of all the stressors and sources of support.

Conclusions

Collectively, these findings highlight the significance of remote teaching as the main cause of stress and professional burnout and suggest that proper preparation of teachers—before and during times of crisis, may have a significant impact on their mental and professional well-being.

Citation: Shimony O, Malin Y, Fogel-Grinvald H, Gumpel TP, Nahum M (2022) Understanding the factors affecting teachers’ burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0279383. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279383

Editor: Vittorio Lenzo, University of Catania: Universita degli Studi di Catania, ITALY

Received: August 4, 2022; Accepted: December 6, 2022; Published: December 30, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Shimony et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All the data files are available from the OSF database - https://osf.io/74j3c/ .

Funding: This work was supported by a research grant to authors O.S, M.N. and T.G. from the Israeli Ministry of Education (grant number 23/11.20). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Professional “burnout” has been defined as a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job [ 1 ]. Several studies confirmed a two-factor structure of the burnout syndrome, including emotional exhaustion and personal fulfillment [ 2 , 3 ]. Teaching is considered a profession with high rates of burnout [ 4 , 5 ], which eventually lead to high professional turnover rates [ 6 ]. Teachers burnout has a significant impact not only on their own will to maintain their profession and their ability to manage classroom behaviors but was also shown to affect their students’ performance and motivation [ 7 ]. In this study, we aimed to better understand the factors that contribute to teachers’ burnout and commitment to work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which was announced in March 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a worldwide pandemic, was a significant global stressor [ 8 , 9 ]. As part of the curve-flattening policy adopted by many countries around the globe, schools were closed, affecting more than 1.5 billion students from 185 different countries [ 10 ]. As a result, educational systems were forced to adopt emergency routines and new teaching methods, such as remote teaching, or learning with parents’ assistance and involvement [ 11 ]. In addition, school teams dealt with health and financial uncertainties and frequent changes in teaching methods. Indeed, several studies to date demonstrated the effect of COVID-19 on teachers’ mental and professional state [ 9 – 13 ]. Collectively, these studies report increases in teacher burnout, which also resulted in high rates of turnover during the pandemic. However, the specific factors within this uniquely stressful situation that may lead to increased burnout rates are still not entirely understood.

Burnout has been shown to be affected by both internal (e.g., psychological distress, anxiety) [ 14 ] as well as external factors, such as teaching resources [ 15 ]. Considering internal factors, such as distress, and anxiety first, these factors were shown to collectively increase in the general population [ 16 – 18 ] and specifically in teacher populations [ 13 ] during the pandemic. Not surprisingly, increased levels of professional burnout were observed among teachers during the pandemic. For example, a study conducted among middle school teachers in Israel found that the high levels of stress during the pandemic were associated with increased burnout and desire to leave the profession [ 14 ]. Similarly, a cross-sectional study among healthcare workers found that trait worry and psychological distress significantly predicted work burnout during the pandemic [ 19 ]. Another cross-sectional study conducted during the first wave of the pandemic among 125 primary school teachers found that 54% of them experienced burnout [ 12 ].

Self-efficacy beliefs, defined as “people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives” [ 20 ], have also been suggested as another internal predictor of teachers’ burnout [ 21 ]. Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs are related to their ability to be effective teachers [ 22 ] and to their commitment to teaching [ 23 ] and are negatively correlated with emotional exhaustion [ 24 ]. The more teachers perceive themselves as empowered by their organization, the more they express their commitment to their organization and to their profession [ 25 ]. Specifically, self-efficacy beliefs may act as a mediator of the relationship between the stress experienced by teachers during this period and eventual burnout. Studies found that teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs ratings were lower during the pandemic compared to previous studies conducted before the pandemic [e.g., 26]. Furthermore, teachers who engaged in virtual teaching only, had the lowest levels of self-efficacy beliefs compared to their peers, who taught in hybrid or face-to-face models. This may be related to the challenges of using novel teaching methods or to the stress and anxiety from teaching the pandemic. In contrast, higher self-efficacy beliefs were found among teachers who reported greater levels of support within their schools during the pandemic [ 26 ]. However, none of these studies, to the best of our knowledge, has examined the effect of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs on burnout levels during the pandemic.

The type of specific coping strategy used to deal with the stressful situation is another internal factor that may contribute to teachers’ professional burnout [ 27 ]. In distressing situations, people use one of two coping strategies—approach-coping or avoidant-coping. Approach-coping strategies are activities designed to change stressful situations or accept their presence, such as seeking comfort and understanding. In contrast, avoidant-coping strategies aim to increase emotional or physical distancing from stressful situations, such as drug and alcohol use [ 28 ]. In a study which examined the coping strategies used by teachers during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors found that the approach-coping strategies were linked to increased happiness, welfare, health, and resilience [ 29 ]. In contrast, avoidant-coping strategies were associated with higher levels of stress, anxiety, anger, sadness, and loneliness. Herein, we ask whether the specific coping strategy used is associated with teachers’ burnout.

In addition to these internal factors—of anxiety, distress, self-efficacy beliefs, and coping strategies—there are external factors that may also significantly affect teacher burnout. Among them, the social support system within the school seems to be a key factor. Studies show that within-school support from peers and supervisors is more effective in reducing teacher burnout compared with non-school support from family and friends [e.g., 30]. A recent study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that administrative support, such as instructional, technological, or emotional assistance, played a crucial role in reducing teacher burnout [ 31 ]. Similarly, perceived support, such as support from the school principal and peer assistance, may also contribute to reducing emotional exhaustion and improving personal accomplishment among teachers [ 32 ]. In addition, social support may strengthen the sense of self-efficacy beliefs among teachers, leading to further reduction in burnout levels [ 33 ]. A comprehensive study from Canada which included 1,626 teachers found that the changes in teaching methods and administrative support predicted teacher burnout during the pandemic [ 34 ]. This is in line with a recent report which examined the educational policy and effects in OECD countries and found that shifting from frontal teaching to remote teaching during the pandemic was done without proper training and support [ 10 ]. Collectively, these studies show that increased burnout during the pandemic was the result of new information and communication technologies, and that the support from the school played a key role in the ability to handle these challenges [ 12 ].

Teachers’ seniority may also affect their professional burnout, commitment to work, and self-efficacy beliefs. However, findings related to seniority are thus far mixed. For example, while one study found that seniority affected self-efficacy beliefs [ 33 ], another study involving elementary school teachers did not find an effect of seniority on burnout [ 32 ]. One potential reason for this discrepancy could be that the effect of seniority on burnout is non-linear. Indeed, a study among 201 high-school teachers, found that teachers with up to five years of seniority and teachers with 21 years or more were more committed to their organization compared with teachers with 6–20 years of seniority [ 33 ]. To the best of our knowledge, no study to date examined the effect of seniority on teachers’ burnout during the pandemic.

In the current study, we examined how all these potential factors—level of stress and anxiety, coping strategies, self-efficacy beliefs, and gaps between the needed and received support contribute to teachers’ professional burnout and commitment to work during the 1 st and 2 nd waves of the pandemic among elementary school teachers. While the relationships between factors such as stress, self-efficacy beliefs, and coping strategy are well-established, there is a lack of understanding of how a health and social crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic may affect them. Based on the literature reviewed, we developed a theoretical model linking these factors together ( Fig 1 ) and applied structural equation modeling to examine its statistical validity. The model examines how all predictors contribute—both directly and indirectly—to teachers’ commitment to work and to their professional burnout. A secondary goal of this research was to focus on the different types of stressors and support-gaps and their relations with the dependent variables- anxiety, self-efficacy beliefs, burnout and commitment.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Hypothesized positive correlations are marked by ‘+’, negative correlations are marked by a ‘-’ sign, and connections which incorporate both positive and negative dimensions are marked by a ‘+/-’ sign.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279383.g001

Gaining a better understanding of the factors contributing to teachers’ professional burnout and commitment to teaching during a time of global crisis may have important implications for preventing stress-related burnout and applying better coping mechanisms during times of crisis. The pandemic itself is a case study for a scenario with a global impact, and as the literature cited above showed, increased burnout among teachers was observed globally. Although most schools have now returned to in-person teaching routines, understanding of the factors contributing to burnout during crisis may help with preparation for future crises.

Materials and methods

Participants and procedure.

The study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the Hebrew University’s institutional committees and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the ethics committee of the Seymour Fox School of Education, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (approval number 2021C06). All participants gave written informed consent before participating in any study-related activities.

We conducted a cross-sectional retrospective quantitative research, designed to determine the path to professional burnout and commitment to work among elementary school teachers during the 1 st and 2 nd waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using this design, we could collect data from a relatively large pool of participants at a single point in time.

Data collection took place between January 25th and February 20th, 2021, during Israel’s 3 rd wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 344 teachers were recruited using a “snowball” sampling method, a convenience sampling technique [ 35 ], via mailing lists, groups of teachers in digital and social media, and teachers with whom we had prior acquaintance. Using the “snowball” sampling technique, we were able to reach teachers’ populations that are difficult to sample when using other sampling methods.

Sample size calculations were conducted using the G-Power software, based on an expected effect size of Cohen’s d = 0.2, as was found in a recent study [ 30 ], for the correlations between the coping approach and the mental state. A sample size of at least 262 participants is required to obtain a power of 0.95 and a significance level of 0.05. Since the dropout rate tends to be relatively high in online studies, we collected data from more participants.

Teachers who met the following inclusion criteria and expressed interest were included in the study: [a] teachers working in elementary, state, or state-religious schools in the Jewish sector. [b] native Hebrew speakers. The exclusion criteria were being on sick leave for more than two weeks or not teaching during this period for reasons other than COVID-19 infection for more than two weeks. We attempted to include a diverse sample in terms of socio-demographic status by advertising in different geographic areas across Israel.

After providing informed consent, participants were given a link to a mobile application and were asked to complete a battery of online questionnaires. The overall completion time for the entire battery was ~25 min. Participants were not directly compensated for their participation in the study. However, participants were asked to provide their email addresses if they wanted to participate in a raffle to win a laptop (four were given to participants).

Participants were asked to provide their responses to all questionnaires in relation to the 1 st (February through May 2020) and 2 nd (June through October 2020) waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel. We measured stressors, needs and sources of support, anxiety, resilience, coping strategy, and self-efficacy beliefs as independent variables, and burnout and commitment to teaching as the dependent variables. Below we provide the full list of measures used.

Since all data collection took place online, we applied the following procedures to maintain the trustworthiness of the data: first, a Google reCAPTCHA was integrated in the application, such that participants were required to click the "I am not a robot" phrase before filling out the questionnaire. This is an acceptable procedure designed to prevent robots from filling out the survey [ 36 ]. Next, three easy random mathematical questions were interleaved among the questionnaires (e.g., “2+2”). This was done to make sure that the participants are attentive to the questionnaires and are not providing random answers. Finally, teachers who wanted to participate in the raffle were required to provide their email address, and we verified that the email address given was valid.

Of note, data collected during this study was saved on the secure database only if the participant clicked on "I am not a robot" and approved to continue, completed all questionnaires, and answered the three mathematical questions correctly, and provided a valid email address (in case an email address was provided).

Stressors resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

W used a 15-item questionnaire which is based on Main et al.’s [ 37 ] original questionnaire to measure stressors resulting from the SARS pandemic, and was adjusted by Khouri et al. [ 19 ] for the COVID-19 pandemic. All items are scored on a 5-level rating scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). An exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation yielded the following four distinct categories and accounted for 68.5% of the variance: (a) physical concerns, (b) mental health concerns (self and relatives), (c) economic and employment concerns (own, relatives), and (d) concerns related to remote teaching. A total score was derived from the average of all 15 items, as well as sub-scores for each category, with higher scores indicating higher level of concern. The scale had strong internal consistency in our sample (Cronbach’s α = .89).

Needs and sources of support during the pandemic.

We used a novel questionnaire that was developed specifically for this study. This 32-item questionnaire included questions from two main types: (a) needs—or sources of support that the teachers needed (16 items), and (b) sources of support received by teachers (16 items). Answers to each item were given on a 6-point Likert scale, from 1 (not at all) to 6 (very much). Final scores were derived by calculating the average difference between items in group “a” (needs) and group “b” (sources), as well as separately for each category. Higher scores indicate a higher level of needs or receiving higher assistance compared to what was received. An exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation yielded four categories of needs and sources of support, accounting for 60.9% of the variance: (a) the school and the Ministry of Education, (b) remote teaching infrastructure, (c) emotional needs and support, and (d) family and friends. The internal consistency of this scale in our sample was good (Cronbach’s α of .87 and .78 for parts a and b, respectively).

State anxiety.

State anxiety was assessed using the 20 items assessing state anxiety from the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) [ 38 ]. Each item is scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from 1 (almost never) to 4 (almost always). Total scores range from 20 to 80 points, with higher scores indicating higher levels of anxiety. The scale also yields a categorical distinction between low (scores between 20–37), moderate (scores between 38–44) and high (above 45) levels of anxiety [ 39 ]. The internal consistency of this scale in our sample was high (Cronbach’s α of .92).

Psychological resilience.

Psychological resilience was measured using the 10-item version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) [ 40 ]. This scale measures the feeling of resilience and one’s ability to cope with stress. Responses are provided on a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (almost never) to 4 (almost always). Total resilience scores range from 0 to 40 points, with higher scores indicating higher self-reported resilience. The internal consistency of this scale in our sample was adequate (Cronbach’s α = .82).

Coping strategies.

Coping strategies were measured using the Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced inventory (Brief-COPE) [ 29 ]. This 28-item questionnaire measures two categories of coping strategies (see similar use in MacIntyre’s et al. study [ 29 ]): 14 items represent ‘approach’ coping strategies and 14 measure ‘avoidant’ coping strategies. Items are rated on a 4-level rating scale, ranging from 0 (not at all) to 3 (very much). The total score in each group is the average of the items, with higher scores indicating higher levels of the coping strategy. The internal consistency in our sample was good (Cronbach’s α = .78 for both avoidant and approach strategies).

Teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs.

Self-efficacy was measured using the short version (12-item) of the Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) [ 39 ]. On this scale, teachers were asked to evaluate their likely success regarding remote teaching. We used the overall score (12 to 60 points) based on its high reliability in previous studies (Cronbach’s α = .90) [ 41 ] and in the current study (α = .92). Each item rated on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much) when higher scores indicating higher levels of self-efficacy beliefs.

Commitment to teaching.

Commitment to the teaching profession was measured using the 9-item Teacher Commitment Scale (TCS) [ 40 ]. Items were rated on a 6-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 6 (very much). Total scores range from 9 to 54 points, with higher scores indicating a higher level of commitment to the teaching profession. The internal consistency of the scale was found to be good in previous studies (Cronbach’s α = .71–.89) [ 42 , 43 ], as well as in our sample (Cronbach’s α = .84).

Professional burnout.

Teachers’ burnout from their profession was measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) [ 1 ]. Items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Here, we used the 14 items which measure two components of burnout concerning teacher-student interactions: emotional exhaustion (six items), and personal fulfillment (eight items). The internal consistency of this scale in our sample was good (Cronbach’s α of .76 and .86 for emotional exhaustion and personal fulfillment, respectively).

Data analysis

IBM SPSS [Statistical Package for the Social Sciences] version 27.0 and IBM AMOS Graphics software version 27.0 were used for statistical analyses. First, descriptive statistics were used to derive participants’ characteristics and study variables. All data were checked for normality and for multivariate outliers. We then used Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation coefficients to examine the correlations between study variables, and FDR correction with Benjamini-Hochberg method [ 43 ] was applied to adjust for multiple testing. After reviewing the correlations, we tested the theoretical model with the factors contributing to burnout and commitment to teaching (see Fig 1 ), using Structural Equation Model (SEM) [ 44 ] with maximum likelihood estimation. Model fit was assessed using the following standard goodness-of-fit indices: chi-square, Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), and Root-Mean-Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) [ 45 ]. A non-significant chi-square, CFI and TLI equal to or greater than .95, and RMSEA equal to or less than .06 are indicative of an acceptable fit. The standardized path coefficients were assessed to examine the statistical significance and directions of path estimate that exist between the variables in the model. Lastly, Pearson’s correlations were used again to zoom-in on the different types of stressors and sources of support and their correlation to the outcome variables. For all analyses, p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Characterization of the study sample

Table 1 lists the demographic characteristics of the study sample. A total of 344 elementary school teachers, from 133 different regions and provinces in Israel, participated in this study. There were no missing data points in the study sample. In total, 320 of the 344 participants were female (93%) and 24 males (7%). The age range of participants was 21–69 years (Mage: 40.69 years; SD: 10.85). Most participants were married or in a relationship (82.5%). More than 50% had at least 10 years seniority as teachers.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279383.t001

Descriptive statistics and correlations between measures

Descriptive statistics of the study variables are shown in Table 2 . Overall, the mean level of anxiety in the sample was 42.03 ± 11.42, on a scale from 20 (low anxiety) to 80 (high anxiety). More than 60% of participants reported moderate to high levels of anxiety (total score of 38–80) during the pandemic: 21.51% experienced moderate levels of anxiety (total score of 38–44; M = 41.35 ± 11.41) while 39.83% of them experienced high anxiety (total score of 45 and over; M = 53.29 ± 7.46). The overall mean level of psychological resilience in the study sample was M = 29.7 ± 7.0 on a scale from 0 (low resilience) to 40 (high resilience).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279383.t002

As a first step towards forming the model, we first calculated the correlations between predictor variables and between predictors and outcomes (see Table 2 ). As expected, both commitment to teaching and personal fulfillment (the 1 st factor of burnout) were positively correlated with the predictors of psychological resilience and self-efficacy beliefs, and negatively correlated with state anxiety. Furthermore, commitment to teaching and personal fulfillment had a significant negative correlation with the gap in support (i.e., the gap between the support needed and the support received) and with stressors. In other words, the larger the gap between needs and provided support, and the higher the level of stressors, the lower the commitment to teaching and the sense of fulfillment. In addition, commitment to teaching had a significant weak negative correlation with avoidant-coping, such that more use of avoidant coping was associated with less commitment. No such correlation was found with the ‘approach’ coping style.

The 2 nd factor of burnout—emotional exhaustion—was negatively correlated with resilience and with self-efficacy beliefs, such that lower levels of psychological resilience and perceived self-efficacy beliefs were associated with higher levels of emotional exhaustion. As expected, emotional exhaustion was positively correlated with avoidant-coping, gap in support, and with all stressors, such that higher levels of emotional exhaustion were associated with higher levels of avoidant-coping, reduced support-gap, and with higher levels of external stressors.

We further examined the correlation between professional seniority (i.e., the number of years as a teacher) and all other variables using Spearman’s correlations. Professional seniority was weakly negatively correlated with anxiety, with emotional exhaustion, and with the gap between needed and provided support (r s (344) = -.13; -.12; -.11, respectively; all p values < .05), and weakly positively correlated with commitment to teaching and with personal fulfillment ( r s (344) = .11; .15, respectively, all p values < .05).

Validation of the theoretical model using SEM

Our first goal was to examine the direct effects of model predictors—namely, stressors, coping strategies, seniority, resilience, and support—on professional burnout and commitment to teaching. In addition, studied their indirect effects through anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs. To further examine the theoretical model, we used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). We excluded the variables with no significant direct or indirect effect on the dependent variables: professional seniority, resilience, and approach coping. The final model is given in Fig 2 . All fit indices indicate a suitable fit of the model to the data (Χ 2 (6) = 5.974, p = .426, CFI = 1.00, NFI = .99, RMSEA = .00, and TLI = 1.00).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279383.g002

The gap in support had a direct and significant effect on all other variables. Specifically, insufficient levels of support directly affected burnout (personal fulfillment and emotional exhaustion) and commitment to teaching. Support-gap also indirectly affected burnout and commitment to teaching, via its effect on self-efficacy beliefs and on anxiety. In other words, insufficient support (less received than desired) directly led to lower levels of professional commitment and to higher levels of burnout, and indirectly, by contributing to the reduction in self-efficacy beliefs and higher levels of anxiety.

Both stressors which were associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., health concerns, dealing with remote teaching) and using the avoidant-coping style had similar and small direct effect on the emotional exhaustion component of burnout, but not on personal fulfillment nor on commitment to work. Interestingly, both variables—stressors and avoidant-coping—had strong indirect effects on burnout and professional commitment, via their strong positive effects on anxiety (0.33 and 0.31 for stressors and avoidant-coping, respectively).

Finally, both anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs significantly contributed to the two components of professional burnout and to commitment to teaching. Specifically, higher levels of anxiety reduced personal fulfillment and commitment to teaching, and increased emotional exhaustion, while higher levels of self-efficacy beliefs had the opposite effect.

COVID-19 related stressors in relation to outcome measures

A secondary goal of the study was to better understand different factors related to the pandemic in relation to well-being and burnout among teachers. More specifically, we aimed to focus on different sources of stress and the gap in support, and their relations with anxiety, self-efficacy beliefs, professional burnout and commitment. For this, we calculated the correlations between all types of stress and support-gaps with all outcomes (see Table 3 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279383.t003

We found that stressors related to remote teaching and the gap in support of remote teaching were significantly correlated with all other outcome measures. Higher levels of stress from remote teaching were associated with increased anxiety and with emotional exhaustion. In addition, a larger gap between the support needed and received for remote teaching was associated with lower levels of commitment to teaching. In general, all stressors and support-gaps were positively correlated with anxiety and with emotional exhaustion.

In this study, we examined the factors which contributed to teachers’ burnout and commitment to teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this, we collected information from 344 elementary school teachers, assessing their mental health, concerns, and resources during the pandemic. Using SEM analysis, we found that the stressors, gaps in support, and coping strategies all contributed to teachers’ burnout, both directly and indirectly, via their effect on anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs. The gaps in support further affected teachers’ commitment to work. A closer look at the different stressors and sources of support and their relations with other variables revealed that the most significant predictors of professional burnout and commitment were stressors and gaps in support which were specifically related to remote teaching. Another contributor was the use of avoidant-coping strategies, which was associated with increased anxiety and burnout and decreased self-efficacy beliefs and commitment.

The contribution of support-gaps, stressors, and coping strategy

A main finding in our study is the fact that insufficient support (i.e., a larger gap between needed and received support) contributed both directly to lower levels of professional commitment and to higher levels of burnout, as well as indirectly, by affecting both self-efficacy beliefs and anxiety. This novel finding is generally in line with previous literature, showing that a supportive environment increases the likelihood of teachers remaining in their job for extended periods of time [ 46 ]. Specifically, teachers rated the support they received from the school’s principal as a critical factor contributing to a feeling of professional satisfaction [ 47 ]. Our study demonstrated the importance of support from schools during emergency times such as the pandemic, even when teaching is done from home. Our results further showed that among the different sources of stress and support, the support from schools is even more critical than support from family and friends. This finding suggests that stakeholders and schools should focus on supplying support to teachers on normal days and particularly during crisis times.

In addition to support, we further found that stressors associated with the pandemic (e.g., health concerns, remote teaching) as well as avoidant-coping styles had direct effects on emotional exhaustion (one of the two components of burnout), and indirect effects on burnout and on professional commitment, via their effects on anxiety. Increased stress during the pandemic has been shown in multiple studies to date, and a recent meta-analysis concluded that 30% of teachers experienced high levels of stress during the pandemic [ 48 ]. In addition, a recent study conducted among Israeli teachers found that more than half of them experienced high levels of stress, which were associated with increased burnout and a desire to leave the profession [ 14 ]. Here we further found that teachers’ burnout was in addition affected by their use of a maladaptive coping strategy, sources of support, and their self-efficacy beliefs, suggesting that tools to strengthen these supports should be provided to teachers by schools ahead of time. In addition, our zooming in on different stressors revealed that stress relating to remote teaching was the most significant one of all the stressors, suggesting that the challenges of teaching were even more salient than the direct effects of the pandemic.

The use of a particular coping strategy to handle stressful situations also contributed to burnout. Specifically, we found that the use of an avoidant-coping strategy was associated with higher levels of stress and anxiety and was associated with increased burnout, and with a reduced commitment to teaching. This finding is consistent with a recent study by MacIntyre and colleagues, in which the authors reported that an avoidant-coping strategy was associated with increased negative emotions of anger, sadness, and loneliness in teachers during the pandemic [ 29 ]. Here, we further show that coping strategies are not only related to changes in mental health but also contribute to burnout and commitment to work. Interestingly, however, the more adaptive coping strategy (approach-coping) was not associated with burnout or with commitment in our study. The fact that the study by MacIntyre and colleagues did find effects of this strategy on positive emotions may indicate that while this type of strategy is beneficial for positive emotions in personal life, it may not have a significant effect on work-related outcomes. It may be that professional burnout and commitment to work are less related to a positive attitude toward the pandemic, such as the approach coping strategy. More research is needed to better understand the potential contribution of this type of strategy to burnout among teachers.

Anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs as contributors to burnout

More than 60% of the teachers in our sample reported medium to high levels of anxiety during the pandemic. This finding is aligned with those of recently-conducted studies [e.g., 13, 27, 48] and of recent meta-analyses showing high levels of anxiety during the pandemic both in the general population and specifically among teachers [ 49 , 50 ]. Here, we further show that higher levels of anxiety contributed to a reduction in personal fulfillment and commitment to teaching and increased emotional exhaustion among teachers, indicating that teacher mental state had a significant impact on their professional functioning. The indirect relations between support, anxiety, burnout, and commitment to teaching in our model, suggest that sufficient support from school could alleviate anxiety which in turn would have led to less burnout and better commitment to teaching during the pandemic.

Gaps in support also influenced teacher self-efficacy beliefs, which in turn have led to increased burnout and decreased commitment. Several studies demonstrated that during pandemic times, teacher self-efficacy beliefs were reduced compared with pre-pandemic times [e.g., 27]. This reduction in self-efficacy beliefs appears to be related to remote teaching. Teachers who were only teaching virtually reported the lowest levels of self-efficacy beliefs, as compared to teachers who were teaching in a hybrid or all-in-person form [ 27 ]. Potentially, the requirements associated with remote teaching, including learning new technologies and adapting lesson plans for virtual and hybrid instruction, have a significant effect on self-efficacy beliefs. In another study, self-efficacy beliefs were also found to mediate the association between difficulties stemming from remote teaching and perceived stress [ 51 ]. Collectively, these findings and our results demonstrate the difficulties in adopting new forms of teaching. They may also suggest that support from the school in adopting new methods of teaching during the pandemic could contribute to teacher self-efficacy beliefs. A strong sense of self-efficacy leads to less burnout and a greater commitment to teaching. Strategies for increasing self-efficacy beliefs among teachers could therefore be employed to reduce burnout and increase commitment, especially during crisis times [ 52 ].

Psychological resilience

Psychological resilience entails better recovery from adversity and a better ability to regulate negative emotions [ 53 ]. Indeed, individuals with high resilience adapt better to stressful situations [ 54 ]. Our findings show that higher levels of resilience alleviated teachers’ stress due to remote teaching. We claim here that teachers who have high levels of self-reported resilience can better adopt new teaching methods and frequent changes between methods. This finding is also in line with previous findings which pointed to the relationship between resilience, professional functioning, self-efficacy beliefs, burnout, and stress among teachers, during non-pandemic times [ 55 ]. Interestingly, however, the effect of resilience in our model was weaker, secondary to more prominent variables such as support-gap and stressors. It may be that during emergency times the effect of internal factors such as resilience are weaker than the effect of external factors such as support. Future studies should therefore address the question of psychological resilience and examine its relationship with teachers’ burnout during times of distress.

Source of stress and support during the pandemic

To examine the factors associated with teachers’ stress during the pandemic, we assessed four different categories of stressors–- stressors related to remote teaching, health worries, financial concerns, and occupational worries. Our results show that all these categories were significant sources of stress for teachers during the pandemic, all directly affecting their professional burnout. The effect of stressors on burnout and their commitment to teaching was also expressed indirectly, via its effect on anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs. This finding is consistent with the literature, generally showing that stress contributes to professional burnout. Specifically, previous studies found that even during non-pandemic times, teachers deal with many professional stressors leading to stress at work and in their personal life, which in turn lead to professional burnout [ 56 ].

Among the four stressors examined, our findings indicate that stress related to remote teaching was the most significant one. Remote teaching that was enforced during the long lockdown periods included new challenges related to online teachings, such as the use of novel technology, teaching from home while having young children, sharing computers between family members, and the like. Our results are consistent with those of recent studies, showing that one of the main stressors that led to burnout among teachers during the pandemic was new teaching demands due to the transition to online teaching [ 32 ]. While we hypothesized that teachers’ seniority will affect this factor, no such effect was found in our study. It may be that remote teaching was novel enough to both new and senior teachers alike, hence no effect of seniority was found. In addition to the difficulties brought about by the switch to online teaching, another study found that teachers believed that the online platform prevented teachers from teaching the regular curriculum [ 47 ]. Furthermore, a recent study found that even teachers with relevant technological skills reported decreased well-being [ 57 ]. Our results further suggest that online teaching constituted the primary stressor among teachers, even compared to health-related stressors, leading to more significant burnout and reduced commitment to teaching.

A novel finding from our research is that insufficient support from schools increased teacher burnout and decreased their commitment to work. We examined the gaps between the support that teachers felt they needed, compared to the support they received, and found that the highest gap was in the support related to remote teaching. This gap significantly contributed to lower levels of commitment and self-efficacy beliefs and higher levels of anxiety and professional burnout. A previous study found that altogether, the use of new information and communication technologies, work/family conflict, social support, and workload related to distance education, have led to increased burnout [ 12 ]. Our study further shows that remote teaching did not constitute merely a technical challenge or exhaustion from an increased workload, but instead, has led to stress and a specific need for support from the school. Specifically, more significant support from the school regarding remote teaching might have reduced adverse feelings among teachers such as anxiety. Interestingly, a recent study reported that not just the pandemic—but also returning to teaching in the classroom after it—was accompanied by high stress and anxiety among teachers [ 58 ]. This finding may suggest that stressors related to remote teaching may also stem from frequent changes and a lack of stability and consistency. One conclusion is that support from the school should supply teachers not only with technical skills but also emotional skills to deal with this kind of situation.

Broader implications

This study is rooted in specific educational, technological, social, and cultural circumstances in Israel which affect Israeli schools and remote teaching. Nevertheless, the literature outlined above along with our findings demonstrates a universal effect of COVID-19 on teachers around the globe. Despite the different cultures and teaching methods, the global transition to remote teaching universally led to a reduced commitment to teaching, and increased stress, anxiety, and burnout for teachers. The results of the current study therefore further contribute to this body of knowledge, specifically highlighting the need for better preparation and training for teachers in novel remote teaching methods.

This study has important implications in two dimensions—technical and psychological. At the technical level, stakeholders should make efforts to strengthen remote teaching skills among teachers and ensure that teachers have all the necessary facilities for remote teaching and to support a smooth transition to remote teaching when this is required [ 59 ]. In addition, help can be provided in the form of a strategy of reframing, which aims at leading to an approach coping, instead of the use of avoidant coping. The contribution of mental health-related factors—such as anxiety and distress—to burnout and commitment, calls for providing better and stable support for teacher populations, especially during crisis times. There is a need to provide teachers with a place to express their feelings at such times, exposing administrators and stakeholders to teachers’ actual needs [ 60 ].

Study limitations

Our study has several limitations which may affect the generalizability of the findings. First, data collection was done retrospectively, i.e., participants were asked to address their feelings about the 1 st and 2 nd waves of the pandemic during the 3 rd wave. Such retrospective self-reports may be biased in multiple ways and are limited to a subjective point of view. Importantly, during the 3 rd wave of the pandemic, unlike the uncertainty of the first two waves, people may have felt more depression or despair, which is more characteristic of a chronic, rather than an acute state [ 61 ].

In addition, the design of this study was cross-sectional, and as such, no causal or sustained effects could not be addressed. This cross-sectional design further limited our ability to assess the contribution of effects not related to COVID-19 on professional burnout among the teachers in our sample. Second, our study sample included elementary school teachers, which limits their generalizability to middle and high school teachers. Although we aimed for a diverse sample, the majority of the sample included women, which is also similar to their proportion in the teaching profession. Given that past research indicated that teachers’ mental health is significantly related to gender [ 62 ], the results may be biased in this respect. Future research with long-term follow-up and a diverse sample of teachers from different educational systems and genders should be conducted to strengthen and validate the current findings.

Finally, we should note that the study only examined a limited set of potential contributors to burnout and professional commitment, considering the feasibility of the remote application of the study. Other factors which may have affected burnout such as socioeconomic status were not considered here, and should be examined in future studies.

We found that gaps between the needed and received support had a direct effect on teacher burnout and commitment, and an indirect effect through anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs. Stress relating to remote teaching and support-gaps regarding remote teaching were the most significant of all the stressors and sources of support. These findings demonstrate the significance of remote teaching as the main cause of stress and professional burnout and suggest that proper preparation of teachers and support by schools can have a significant effect on teachers’ mental and professional well-being.

• View Article
• PubMed/NCBI
• Google Scholar
• 8. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-2019) Situation Reports [Internet]. World Health Organization; 2020. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports
• 9. Schleicher A. Coronavirus: Why collaboration is the key for teachers [Internet]. 2020. https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-what-can-talis-teach-us-about-ourresponse-covid-19
• 10. Masters G, Taylor-Guy P, Fraillon J, Chase A. Ministerial Briefing Paper on Evidence of the Likely Impact on Educational Outcomes of Vulnerable Children Learning at Home during COVID-19. 2020 Apr 27; https://www.dese.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/ministerial_briefing_paper_covid19_and_vulnerable_children_acer_22april2020.pdf
• 13. Gutentag T, Asterhan C. Teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic: Teacher stress, well-being and professional commitment.
• 18. Mustari S, Rahman MZ. The Effect of the Corona Disaster on Women: lock down and Corona virus from the lens of Social science [Internet]. SocArXiv; 2020 May [cited 2022 May 23]. https://osf.io/4e63c
• 19. Khouri M, Cohen N. Job Burnout among Israeli Healthcare Workers During The First Months of COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Emotion Regulation Strategies and Psychological Distress [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020 Nov [cited 2022 May 23]. https://osf.io/m24de
• 28. Carver C, Scheier M. On the self-regulation of behavior. Cambridge University Press; 2001.
• 36. von Ahn L, Blum M, Hopper NJ, Langford J. CAPTCHA: Using Hard AI Problems for Security. In: Biham E, editor. Advances in Cryptology—EUROCRYPT 2003. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2003. p. 294–311. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).
• 38. Spielberger C, Gorsuch R, Lushene R. Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Consulting Psychologists Press; 1970.
• 43. Allen R, Tapp T, Jerrim J, Sims S. How did the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic affect teacher wellbeing?: 20.
• 45. Suhr D. The Basics of Structural Equation Modeling.: 19.
• 46. Tabachnick B. Experimental Designs Using ANOVA. 2007.
• 56. Cooper C, Marshal J. Sources of managerial and white-collar stress. In: Cooper C, Payne R, editors. Stress at Work. Wiley; 1978.
• 57. Mohalik R, Sahoo S. E-Readiness and Perception of Student Teachers’ Towards Online Learning in the Midst of COVID-19 Pandemic. SSRN Electron J [Internet]. 2020 [cited 2022 May 23]; https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=3666914
• 59. Schwartz HL, Grant D, Diliberti MK, Hunter GP, Setodji CM. Remote Learning Is Here to Stay: Results from the First American School District Panel Survey. Research Report. RR-A956-1. RAND Corporation. RAND Corporation; 2020.

open Departments and Offices

• Administration, Rehabilitation, and Postsecondary Education
• Child and Family Development
• Counseling and School Psychology
• Dual Language and English Learner Education
• Educational Leadership
• Joint Ph.D. Program in Education
• Special Education
• School of Teacher Education
• Office for Student Success
• Office of the Dean

open Colleges

• Arts and Letters
• Fowler College of Business
• Engineering
• Graduate Studies
• Health and Human Services
• SDSU Library
• Professional Studies and Fine Arts
• Weber Honors College

open Other Locations

• SDSU Georgia
• SDSU Global Campus
• SDSU Imperial Valley
• SDSU Mission Valley
• College of Education

Karnopp’s research on enhancing teacher belonging nets AERA award

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share via Email

It should be no surprise that talk of improving educational outcomes often focuses heavily on supporting students. But Jennifer Karnopp has long believed that there is a missing piece to the puzzle.

“I think student wellbeing is really in vogue these days, and with good reason,” explains Karnopp, an assistant professor in San Diego State University’s Department of Educational Leadership. “But given the great numbers of teachers who are leaving the profession — and the difficulty in recruiting new teachers — a lot more attention needs to be given to teacher wellbeing."

Her colleagues are taking note. 

At the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia in  April, Karnopp and University of California, San Diego researcher Peter Bjorklund Jr. received a Best Paper Award from the AERA Lives of Teachers Special Interest Group (SIG) . Their paper — titled “...Your Opinion is Counted Even Though You're New Here: Experiences That Enhance Teacher Belonging" — is rooted in Karnopp’s and Bjorklund’s work in the Encinitas Union School District to study the district’s strong reputation for teacher wellbeing.

A former teacher and charter school principal, Karnopp’s research explores the intersection of social relationships and organizational structures and how they impact school improvement and change. Of particular interest is the important role social relationships and informal space play in supporting a sense of belonging and positive change in schools.

In Encinitas, Karnopp sees a district where teachers — and, significantly, new teachers — feel valued and heard by their colleagues. This has been fostered through supportive partnerships with mentor teachers, but also through opportunities to interact informally with colleagues through social clubs, monthly breakfasts and other activities. 

“It was really validating, I think, for the idea that teacher wellbeing — their own internal sense of belonging and flourishing — is important,” Karnopp said of the award. “To have it being valued by other scholars in AERA was really nice.”

LISTEN: Learn more about Karnopp’s work on the COE Connections podcast .

Become a difference maker