The development of burnout among teachers in China : a job demands-resources perspective

Abstract

The burnout experience of teachers has received international research attention because teaching is among those professionals with the highest level of job stress. Teacher burnout has serious consequences for the teachers’ occupational health and for the quality of education. According to the job demands and resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti 2017; Demerouti et al. 2001), burnout occurs in the health-impairment process in which high job demands make teachers feel exhausted and cynical toward their work. Moreover, in recent attempts to extend the JD-R model, researchers argued that personal demands and personal resources may act in a similar way as job demands and job resources. Notably, apart from demands and resources, recent literature explores the role of individual behaviour strategies in burnout process and attempts to integrate them into the JD-R model to increase its predictive power (Demerouti, Bakker & Xanthopoulou 2019). Though literature has shown that teachers across the globe share some common mechanisms in their burnout development, China’s cultural context, social and educational conditions cultivate distinct work and personal characteristics and contribute to shape a unique burnout profile of Chinese teachers. This thesis aims to undertake a contextualized study on the development of burnout in the Chinese education sector and investigate on how those culturally specific antecedents contribute to the health-impairment process of the JD-R model in this teacher group. This research makes some important contributions to the literature. First, the research addresses the call of Bakker and Demerouti (2017) and Demerouti, Bakker and Xanthopoulou (2019) to extend the JD-R model by integrating individual behaviour strategies. The research theoretically develops and empirically confirms a mediation model to show how job demands influence burnout in a sample of Chinese teachers. Second, drawing on both JD-R theory and the transactional theory of stress and coping, the research investigates and explains the complex underlying mechanism in the job demands and burnout linkage. Finally, the research addresses the call of Bakker and Demerouti (2017) and Zeijen et al. (2021) to investigate the role of personal demands in the extension of the JD-R model. The research also provides several implications for practice. First, policy makers and HR managers in the education sector should be aware of the specific job demands on Chinese teachers. Second, schools should support teachers to engage more in crafting their job and involve less in avoiding job tasks. Finally, HR managers may consider recruiting, developing, and managing employees who generally have lower tendency of perfectionism.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English