The Impact Of Occupational Stress On Job Burnout In Primary And Secondary School Teachers: The Mediating Role Of Social Support And Psychological Empowerment

Nowadays,primary and secondary school teachers are facing a series of problems,such as high pressure of work,difficult management of students,heavy and trivial work tasks and imperfect work assessment system.They find that their enthusiasm for work is gradually disappearing and their sense of achievement is decreasing.In view of the above-mentioned factors,job burnout begins to happen,which is often considered to be the result of occupational stress.Considering certain occupational needs,it has a more serious negative impact on those who lack appropriate coping resources.Based on the Stress Process Model,the current study explores the mediating role of social support and psychological empowerment in the relationship between teachers’ occupational stress and job burnout,which has considered the external environmental factors and internal cognitive factors,respectively.It is also a way to fully understand the internal mechanism of the relationship between them,and to provide the necessary basis for teachers’ professional development,especially the intervention of teachers in the period of job burnout.In this study,502 valid questionnaires were collected from primary and secondary school teachers through on-site and online methods using the Teacher Occupational Stress Scale,Teacher Burnout Scale,Social Support Scale and Psychological Empowerment Scale.We used independent sample t test and one-way ANOVA to analyze the different characteristics of each dimension of primary and secondary school teachers’ job burnout,and then established structural equation model to explore the internal mechanism between occupational stress and job burnout.The results of the research are displayed as follows.1.Overall,teachers’ emotional exhaustion is in the theoretical median position,that is,they have moderate emotional exhaustion symptoms.Primary and secondary school teachers have a higher sense of personal achievement and a lower level of dehumanization.2.There is no significant difference in job burnout between male and female teachers;the emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment of older teachers are higher than that of young teachers,but the older teachers’ dehumanization level is lower than that of young teachers;the emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment of married teachers are higher than that of unmarried teachers;the emotional exhaustion,personal accomplishment and dehumanization level of head teachers are higher than that of non-head teachers;the emotional exhaustion of junior middle school teachers is significantly lower than that of primary and high school teachers,and the dehumanization level of primary school teachers is significantly higher than that of junior middle school teachers;the emotional exhaustion of city and rural teachers is higher than that of town teachers,and the personal accomplishment of urban teachers is significantly higher than that of town and rural teachers.3.The occupational stress sources of primary and secondary school teachers are positively correlated with emotional exhaustion and dehumanization.Among them,examination pressure,workload and career expectation are positively correlated with personal accomplishment,while student factors,self-development needs,family interpersonal pressure are not significantly correlated with personal accomplishment.Besides examination pressure,other sources of occupational stress are negatively correlated with social support and psychological empowerment.Emotional exhaustion was negatively correlated with social support and psychological empowerment.Personal achievement is positively correlated with social support and psychological empowerment.Dehumanization is negatively correlated with social support and psychological empowerment.There is a positive correlation between social support and psychological empowerment.4.Among the six sources of occupational stress of primary and secondary school teachers,the stress of examination pressure,workload and professional expectation has a positive impact on teachers’ emotional exhaustion;the examination pressure has a significant positive impact on teachers’ personal accomplishment;the stress of self-development has a negative impact on personal accomplishment;the stress of students and family interpersonal aspects have positive impacts on the dehumanization level of teachers.5.Social support and psychological empowerment mediated the relations between career expectation pressure and emotional exhaustion,between teachers’ self-development needs pressure and personal accomplishment,and also between family interpersonal pressure and dehumanization.Through understanding this internal mechanism,it can provide effective help for the intervention of teachers’ burnout symptoms.