Teacher Stress, Burnout, and Attrition After the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Teacher Stress and Coping: Teachers' Experiences Navigating Student Wellness During COVID-19

Abstract

We aim to contribute to the literature on teacher burnout by identifying: 1) the relative contribution of work and life stress on teacher burnout, 2) the role that individual psychological resources play in the relationship between work stress and teacher burnout and 3) how COVID-19 related complications impacted stress and burnout. The following research question frames the study: What sociodemographic, psychological, and contextual factors are associated with high levels of teacher stress and burnout since the pandemic?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; Viac & Fraser, 2020) asserted a global need to understand teacher occupational well-being to address shortages and attrition in the field that were only exacerbated by COVID-19. During the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice in the United States specifically, the education system confronted compounding challenges including shifting COVID-19 safety protocols, increased rates of student discipline issues, increased scrutiny of curricula, and widening academic and socioeconomic disparities. These factors intensified the multiple responsibilities teachers already navigate in their work. Teachers report high levels of occupational stress (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001), with estimates of ranging from 61% (American Federation of Teachers, 2017) to 93% (Herman, Hickmon-Rosa, & Reinke, 2018), which has deleterious effects on their mental and physical health as well as on student outcomes (Byrne, 1999; García-Carmona et al., 2019; Kyriacou, 2001). High stress also contributes to teacher burnout and attrition (Bottiani, Duran, Pas, & Bradshaw, 2019; Maciejewska et al., 2019). Thus, it is important to identify potential malleable factors that can mitigate teachers’ experience of stress. Of interest in this study, employees in the same environment develop burnout to different degrees. Individual characteristics can shape one’s stress response process (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) while organizational factors can buffer (or catalyze) experiences of stress (Grayson & Alvarez, 2008; Mahatmya et al., 2022).

Participants included PK-12 teachers working inside and outside of the United States (n = 236). Participants were recruited nationwide using email and social media outlets (e.g., Facebook). Upon electronic consent, participants completed a voluntary five-minute web-based survey with items from the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educator (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996), perceived stress scale (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983), work-related sense of coherence scale (Vogt, Jenny, & Bauer, 2013), researcher-created items around COVID-related stress, and demographics. The study was IRB-approved.

Findings from ANOVA and OLS regression tests revealed the unique and joint contributions of psychological factors and school and covid-related stressors on burnout. Across all dimensions (exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment subscales), student issues were a statistically significant positive contributor to feelings of burnout, while meaningfulness (sense of coherence) was the only psychological resource associated with burnout. There were differences in burnout and stressors by teacher gender, teacher type (gen ed, special ed, etc.) and whether teachers considered leaving the past school year. These findings offer a preliminary investigation into how psychological, contextual, and COVID factors influence teachers’ stress and burnout with the potential to inform individualized and systemic interventions that can better promote teacher and school-based well-being.

Authors

• Duhita Mahatmya, University of Iowa
  Presenting Author

• Sara McDaniel, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author

• Allison L Bruhn, University of Iowa
  Presenting Author