Psychological detachment and work-related rumination in teachers: A systematic review

Difficulties detaching psychologically from work among German teachers: prevalence, risk factors and health outcomes within a cross-sectional and national representative employee survey

“…Furthermore, the prevalence rate among primary and secondary teachers is compared to other occupations as well as other types of teachers as reference groups, by using data from a large-scale national and representative survey of German employees. This goes beyond previous studies e.g., [21,22] and allows conclusions whether primary and secondary teachers might especially be vulnerable for difficulties to psychologically detach from work. Third, we aim to identify specific risk factors of detachment difficulties in German teachers.…”

“…This means that they do not only vary between persons but also within persons from day to day. Although prior research showed that correlations of psychological detachment in relation to risk factors and outcomes are often stronger on the between-person than on the within-person level [ 37 ] only a few diary studies on teachers detachment have been published so far [ 22 ]. Therefore, future research should use such micro longitudinal study designs more often here, also because prior research showed that within-person variability of constructs might even moderate between-person relationships, for instance, between job demands and strain outcomes [ 38 ].…”

“…For instance, teachers’ emotional demands (e.g., difficult interactions with students or parents) or physical demands (e.g., noise) were less often considered in prior studies. Second, differentiating between different groups of teachers is important since the work of teachers and the stress level might not be comparable [ 22 ]. Contrary to that notion, van Droogenbroeck and Spruyt [ 23 ] did not find evidence for more psychological and somatic complaints in comparison to 31 other occupations and between different types of teachers.…”

“…For instance, the strongest negative correlations were found for overload demands (ρ = −.30; e.g., working fast) and emotional demands (ρ = −.28; e.g., from client contacts) whereas relationships with cognitive demands (ρ = −.18; e.g., multitasking), contextual resources in the work domain (ρ = .08; e.g., colleague support), and physical demands (ρ = −.06; e.g., working under noise) are often lower on average. In the present study many personal (i.e., age, sex), occupational (e.g., tenure, employment contract, working hours, working on weekends, telework), and work-related factors that have been studied in a more piecewise fashion in earlier studies and, most importantly, less often in teachers [ 20 , 22 ], are tested. The forth contribution of our study is that we investigate how difficulties detaching psychologically from work relate to indicators of teachers’ health impairment.…”

“…Psychological detachment from work negatively relates to work-related stressors and positively relates to indicators of wellbeing and physical and mental health [17][18][19][20], see also [21] for a summary). However, a recent review found that only a few studies investigated psychological detachment among teachers and called for more fine-grained study approaches in this profession [22]. First, it is necessary to consider work stressors that are mainly relevant to the teaching profession and to analyse them systematically.…”