Teacher Burnout: A Research Agenda

Maslach and Leiter's framework holds that burnout emerges from interplay among job demands, collegial support, school culture, teacher attributes, and broader policy and ecological factors.

“The model suggests that burnout results from the interaction among task qualities (e.g., work demands, work overload, role ambiguity, role conflict), social support (e.g., collegial support), organizational characteristics (e.g., school culture), teachers’ personal qualities (e.g., personality, motivation), and political, policy, economic context, and ecology of the school (e.g., societal values,”

Most research has lacked theory and has not proposed or tested a model linking burnout's antecedents and consequences to teacher behavior and student outcomes.

“More problematically, most studies have been atheoretical and have neither proposed nor tested a model for understanding the antecedent and consequent variables of teacher burnout and its effects on teacher behavior and student outcomes as suggested by Maslach and Leiter (1999; Shen et al., 2015).”

Maslach and Leiter's model allows teacher behavior and student engagement, as proximal factors, to mediate the path from burnout to the distal outcome of student learning.

“According to Maslach and Leiter’s (1999) model, proximal variables of teacher behaviors and student engagement in learning could be viewed as mediating factors between teacher burnout and a distal variable of student learning outcomes.”

Depression overlaps only partly with burnout and omits several factors believed to constitute burnout.

“However, depression only has modest overlap with burnout (Brenninkmeyer, Van Yperen, & Buunk, 2001) and fails to include all the factors generally thought to underlie burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 1999).”

This study offers some empirical support for Maslach and Leiter's teacher burnout model.

“the current study provides some empirical support for the teacher burnout model proposed by Maslach and Leiter (1999).”

The model suggests burnout can have a distant, indirect effect on long-term student outcomes through teaching quality and student engagement.

“Consistent with the model, burnout can operate via a distant, indirect effect on student’s long-term educational outcomes through teaching quality and student engagement.”

Teacher burnout, especially emotional exhaustion and cynicism, leads to less involvement and effort in lesson planning and less favorable social behavior towards students.

“Maslach and Leiter (1999) proposed that teacher burnout, and especially emotional exhaustion and cynicism, will lead to less involvement and effort in lesson planning and less favorable social behavior towards students.”