Are You Tired of Working amid the Pandemic? The Role of Professional Identity and Job Satisfaction against Job Burnout

Abstract

With the outbreak of novel coronavirus in 2019, most universities changed from traditional offline teaching to online teaching, which brought about a large amount of problems, including teachers’ physical and mental problems. Because of teaching on the computer screen for a long period of time, the teacher lacks communication and can act casually. With long-term accumulation, the problem of teachers’ job burnout has become increasingly serious. The main purpose of this study was to examine the influence of professional identity on job burnout during the period of the novel coronavirus. At the same time, this study also discussed the moderating effect of job satisfaction on professional identity and job burnout, and its relationship between job satisfaction and job burnout. During the peak period of the COVID-19 epidemic, we conducted an online survey—483 Chinese university teachers with online teaching experience completed the Teacher Professional Identity Scale, Job Satisfaction Scale, and Job Burnout Scale. The results of this study found professional identity and job satisfaction of university teachers to be significantly negative predictors of job burnout, with job satisfaction playing a moderating role between professional identity and job burnout. This study also confirmed that professional identity and job satisfaction are important factors affecting job burnout of university teachers. Therefore, this study proposed that schools should adopt more effective strategies to improve university teachers’ professional identity and job satisfaction in order to reduce the practical problems of job burnout, ensure the effectiveness of online teaching, and maintain the sustainable development during the epidemic.

Exploring the Relationships between Resilience and Turnover Intention in Chinese High School Teachers: Considering the Moderating Role of Job Burnout

“…Previous research has found that professionals who provide social and humanistic services (including teachers from different teaching fields) often experience job burnout [24][25][26]. In the educational context, many factors can induce job burnout syndrome, mainly individual physiological and psychological factors, communicative relations, and environmental factors [27]. Relevant research has shown that teachers' job burnout is caused by their long-term and extensive job stress, and its main symptoms are tension and fatigue in job perception, excessive obedience in the face of school and family, and low personal accomplishment [28].…”

Working Hours, Job Burnout, and Subjective Well-Being of Hospital Administrators: An Empirical Study Based on China’s Tertiary Public Hospitals

“…It has three characteristics: (1) the feeling of energy expenditure or exhaustion; (2) increasing the perceptual distance from work, or work-related negative emotions or feelings of cynicism; (3) reducing professional performance [ 7 ]. In addition to the negative impact on individual physical and mental health, burnout also affects organizational commitment, turnover intention, and job performance [ 8 ]. The work characteristics of extreme intensity, high stress, and long working hours of health professionals make them one of the most susceptible groups to generate job burnout [ 9 ].…”

Teaching Disruption by COVID-19: Burnout, Isolation, and Sense of Belonging in Accounting Tutors in E-Learning and B-Learning

“…Prior literature has focused mainly on burnout definition, adjustments, prevention, and factors associated with burnout syndrome related to teachers (such as self-efficacy, self-esteem), students (such as relatedness), organization, and environmental (for example, attitudes towards inclusion and organization support) and socio-demographic factors (such as gender, age, and work experience) [ 4 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. More recently scholars have paid special attention to teacher burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly examining the switch from face-to-face classes to the online setting [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”

“…In addition, the sense of belonging to the academic community and professional identity have attracted the attention of researchers [ 14 , 26 ]. This study also examined the sense of belonging in e-learning and b-learning modalities before and after COVID-19 disruption.…”