The impact of transformational leadership on teachers' job burnout: the mediating role of social-emotional competence and student-teacher relationship
Journal of Educational Administration
ISSN: 0957-8234
Article publication date: 15 February 2022
Issue publication date: 23 June 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Principal leadership is an important external environmental factor that affects and alleviates teachers' job burnout. The purpose of this paper is to explore the deep internal mechanisms of the influence of principal transformational leadership on teacher job burnout in the context of Chinese teachers.
Design/methodology/approach
A cluster sampling method was used to conduct a questionnaire survey on 990 elementary school teachers in 14 primary schools in Beijing. This study uses a structural equation model to analyze the chain intermediary effect of social-emotional competence and the student-teacher relationship between transformational leadership and teachers' job burnout.
Findings
The results reveal that transformational leadership has a significant negative predictive effect on teachers' job burnout; this kind of leadership affects teachers' job burnout through a chain intermediary effect of social and emotional competence and student-teacher relationship.
Originality/value
This research has discovered that teacher burnout is the result of the interaction of external environmental and individual internal factors. Transformational leadership, as an external environmental factor, positively predicts the internal social-emotional competence of the teacher, and then the teacher's internal social-emotional competence positively predicts the external student-teacher relationship. Finally, the teacher-student relationship of the external environment negatively predicts the job burnout of internal individual teachers.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The research was supported by the “Social and Emotional Learning and School Management Improvement project” of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 71774017) and BNU Faculty of Education Student Research Fund Project (Grant 2112207) and BNU Interdisciplinary Research Foundation for the First-Year Doctoral Candidates (Grant BNUXKJC2101).
Citation
Tian, J., Zhang, W., Mao, Y. and Gurr, D. (2022), "The impact of transformational leadership on teachers' job burnout: the mediating role of social-emotional competence and student-teacher relationship", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 60 No. 4, pp. 369-385. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-04-2021-0075
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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