engleski

The mediating role of teachers' emotions and burnout in explaining the relationship between perceived principal support and work engagement: testing the structural equivalence across educational levels

Teaching is a profession characterized by high levels of burnout which affects teacher profession through attrition and shortage, but also by reducing their work motivation and performance as well as the quality of instruction in general. The sources of teacher burnout are complex and multifaceted and relate both to individual (e.g. personality), organizational (e.g. educational level) and transactional factors (e.g. perceived principal support and organizational leadership style). Although antecedents and consequences of teacher burnout has been widely studied, empirical evidence regarding the emotional aspects (especially the positive ones) of teachers’ lives, and its’ connection to burnout is still lacking. Thus, the aim of this study was to test the mediating role of teachers’ emotions and burnout in explaining the relationship between perceived principal support and work engagement. Moreover, we aimed at testing the moderating effect of educational level (i.e. elementary vs. secondary level of primary school) on the proposed relations among constructs. The study was conducted on 854 elementary school teachers (Mage=42.3, SDage=10.1 ; 820 female) and 1032 secondary school teachers (Mage=41.1, SDage=10.3 ; 861 female) from Croatia. Teachers filled out self-report scales measuring burnout (exhaustion and disengagement), work engagement (vigor, dedication and absorption), perceived principal support and positive emotions that teachers experience in relation to their students (joy, pride). Based on multigroup SEM, the following was concluded: 1) emotions and burnout fully mediated the relationship between principal support and work engagement ; 2) emotions partially mediated the relationship between principal support and burnout ; 3) the size of the structural associations among constructs varied across different educational levels ; and 4) the directions of the associations among variables were theoretically meaningful.

teachers; burnout; emotions; educational level

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