Teachers’ emotional exhaustion is negatively related to students’ achievement: Evidence from a large-scale assessment study.

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated that teachers' professional knowledge and motivation are strongly related to students' learning and motivation. Symptoms of teachers' stress and burnout (e.g., emotional exhaustion) are also thought to influence students' achievement, but no empirical study has tested this prediction. Using multilevel analyses and a representative sample consisting of 1,102 German elementary school teachers and their students, we addressed this gap in knowledge by examining the association between teachers' emotional exhaustion and students' achievement in mathematics, and by testing whether classroom composition moderates this relation. We controlled for teachers' gender, their years of experience, their teaching certificate, and the composition of the class, and on the student level for students' gender, language spoken at home, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability. Results revealed that teachers' emotional exhaustion was significantly negatively related to students' mathematics achievement, even after teacher characteristics and classroom composition were controlled for. Classroom composition moderated this relation, whereby teachers' emotional exhaustion was more strongly related to students' achievement in classes with a high percentage of language minority students. These results highlight the importance of teachers' well-being for students' learning.

Meta‐analysis of mindfulness training on teacher well‐being

“…Moreover, not only are teachers leaving the field and reporting higher rates of emotional distress, but students are also feeling the effects of educator burnout. Research has suggested that teacher's feelings of stress and burnout are associated with student emotional well‐being and academic achievement (Becker, Goetz, Morger, & Ranellucci, ; Klusmann, Richter, & Lüdtke, ). Student behavior, such as vandalism, bullying, defiance, and talking back to teachers, is correlated to educator stress and burnout (Geving, ; Kokkinos, ).…”

“…Students of teachers that are feeling burned‐out tend to cause more behavioral disruptions, be less motivated, and reach their academic goals less frequently (Jennings & Greenberg, ). Heightened emotional exhaustion is associated with decreased student growth, and lower scores on student's academic achievement tests as student's feelings of anger and enjoyment are related to their teacher's instructional behaviors (Becker et al, ; Klusmann et al, ). Educators that suffer from burnout have decreased classroom organization and a diminished ability to model emotional regulation.…”

The longitudinal effects of induction on beginning teachers’ stress

“…Experiencing high levels of stress is detrimental for teachers’ well‐being, their teaching behaviour quality, and retention (Harmsen, Helms‐Lorenz, Maulana, & van Veen, ; Hanif, ). Furthermore, teacher stress harms students’ achievement (Klusmann, Richter, & Lüdtke, ; Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wyckoff, ).…”

Does teacher-student relationship mediate the relation between student misbehavior and teacher psychological well-being?

“…Emotional exhaustion is a factor that causes a decline in teacher psychological well-being, in which emotional exhaustion is the main factor that causes a person to despair, give up and quit his job. Emotional exhaustion refers to stress dimension experienced by a person, including feelings of tense, depressed and decreasing the level of patience (Maslach et al, 2001), which ultimately has an adverse impact on student learning outcomes (Klusmann, Richter, & Lüdtke, 2016;Shen et al, 2015).…”