Frontiers in Psychology (May 2022)

Self-Efficacy and Emotion Regulation as Predictors of Teacher Burnout Among English as a Foreign Language Teachers: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

  • Hang Bing,
  • Bakhtiar Sadjadi,
  • Maryam Afzali,
  • Jalil Fathi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.900417
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13

Abstract

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Since teachers and their psychological factors have a significant share of variance in accounting for success in educational contexts, significant number of empirical studies have investigated the associations among intrapsychic variables of teachers. To further examine the inter-connections between individual teacher constructs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts, this study explored the role of emotion regulation and teacher self-efficacy in predicting teacher burnout in the Chinese EFL context. In so doing, a sample of 174 EFL teachers completed a survey containing the three valid scales measuring these constructs. Structural Equation Modeling was employed to examine the structural model of the variables under investigation. The findings revealed that teacher self-efficacy accounted for 20% of the variance in burnout, whereas emotion regulation represented 11.2% of the teacher burnout variance. Overall, it was revealed that although both variables exerted a significant unique contribution to teacher burnout, teacher self-efficacy seemed to be a stronger predictor of burnout than emotion regulation of teachers. The results might have remarkable implications for EFL teacher development programs.

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