Does Accountability Aggravate the Risk of Teacher Burnout? Evidence from the Chinese Education System

Abstract

External and internal accountabilities and emotional labor are possible factors triggering teacher burnout, but the relationships between the constructs have not been fully addressed. Thus, this study aimed to construct and test a chain mediation model to demonstrate the relationships between external accountability and burnout, mediated by internal accountability and emotional labor sequentially. By surveying 814 teachers (years of teaching: M = 13.42, SD = 10.97) from 10 provinces in China, it shows: (1) external and internal accountabilities are both negatively related to burnout; (2) internal accountability, deep acting, and expression of naturally felt emotions mediate the relationship between external accountability and burnout; (3) internal accountability and surface acting sequentially play a chain mediating role between external accountability and burnout; and (4) internal accountability and expression of naturally felt emotions sequentially play a chain mediating role between external accountability and teacher burnout.

Examining the Implementation of Situational Language Teaching (SLT) in the EFL classroom: A semi-systematic literature review

“…According to Pei (2017), China's "higher education system, the government is located in center position and plays a leading role," which results in restrictive and authoritarian educational administrative systems where teachers are rewarded only when they display excellent performance in teaching. This is evaluated by students' performance in standardized tests and examinations; lower level student results lead to teachers' external accountability which tends to disqualify and exclude them (Li & Tsang, 2023). Source: Own.…”

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“…The findings of this study imply that the four dimensions are distinct structural aspects of school bureaucracy, so teachers are sensitive to each of them in mainland China. In mainland China, the government has implemented education governance reforms based on the managerial logics of accountability that force schools to strictly monitor teachers to produce defined outcomes by setting formal rules, procedures, regulations and policies without consideration of teachers' values at the top of the school hierarchy (Li and Tsang, 2023), leading to teachers' sense of demoralization and deprofessionalism (Wang et al, 2014). In this sense, Chinese school bureaucracy generally displays the structural aspects of coercive formalization and hindering centralization.…”