An Appraisal Perspective of Teacher Burnout: Examining the Emotional Work of Teachers

Abstract

K-12 teaching is a profession characterized by high levels of burnout and emotional exhaustion. Teacher burnout has been widely reviewed and studied; however, only limited literature examines the emotional aspects of teachers' lives and its connection with teacher burnout. The purpose of this article is to review the literature on teacher burnout and teachers' emotions and to examine the role of teachers' appraisal of their emotional exhaustion. Through reviewing the literature on teacher burnout and emotions, I argue that the habitual patterns in teachers' judgments about student behavior and other teaching tasks may contribute significantly to teachers' repeated experience of unpleasant emotions and those emotions may eventually lead to burnout. In order to ease teacher burnout, I argue that more studies on the antecedent appraisals that teachers make are necessary to help teachers better understand how their emotions were triggered and then learn how to regulate those emotions.

Can empathy lead to emotional exhaustion in teachers? The mediating role of emotional labor

“…The finding that surface acting may be particularly emotionally exhausting suggests that the interventions aimed at minimizing teacher burnout should focus on the mood regulation skills. As it was stated earlier, teaching involves immense amounts of emotional labor and for that reason it is impossible for teachers not to use their emotions at work [12,13].…”

“…Still, whether these interactions will contribute to emotional exhaustion or not depends on the way a teacher will interpret a student's behavior. As Chang [12] pointed out, teachers do not experience burnout because of students' behavior itself, but because of teachers' appraisals. For instance, some teachers may interpret students' misbehavior personally.…”

“…Recent research has also focused on teachers as "emotional laborers" [2,[9][10][11]. It has been stressed that emotional involvement is an integral part of the teaching profession [1,[12][13][14][15][16]. A significant majority of the teaching workforce is represented by women, which clearly corresponds with the fact that emotional labor is typical of those professions which are feminized [3,17].…”

Teachers’ Emotional Labour and Burnout: Does Perceived Organizational Support Matter?

“…As yet, there is limited evidence about how the emotional labour involved in the teaching role may undermine the well-being of teachers. Most of what is known has been garnered from reviews, commentaries and ethnographic studies (Chang, 2009), suggesting an existing research void that warrants further investigation. In addition, although there has been a surge of interest in emotional labour and burnout, as they continue to appear as core concepts in recent organizational behaviour studies (e.g., Demerouti et al, 2014;Moon, Hur, & Jun, 2013;Schaufeli & Salanova, 2014), these concepts appear to be somewhat in embryonic stage in the Nigerian organizational context.…”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff:” Understanding teacher resilience at the chalkface

“…Attributes such as a strong sense of competence, efficacy and accomplishment, humour (Bobek, 2002), purposeful career decision making, self-insight, professional freedom, agency (Sumsion, 2004) and use of coping strategies (Sharplin, O'Neill, & Chapman, 2011) have been identified as important. Conversely, teachers less able to manage the emotional (resilience related) aspects of their working lives are more likely to experiences stress and burnout (Chang, 2009). A shift in thinking from attrition to resilience offers the potential for more effective interventions to occur (Sumsion, 2003) in both teacher education and the teaching profession.…”