Development of the Teacher Workplace Emotional Health Scale.

Abstract

Background: Teacher well-being in Taiwan is challenged by excessive workloads, administrative demands, after-hours digital communications, and societal expectations, leading to stress, burnout, and diminished job satisfaction. Existing tools often assess isolated constructs without integrating emerging stressors like social media pressure.

Methods: Following a six-stage scale development framework, the Teacher Workplace Emotional Health Scale was created, integrating emotional labor, emotional intelligence, job burnout, and social media pressure. Literature review, expert validation, pretesting, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted with teachers from multiple regions and school levels.

Results: The final 25-item scale demonstrated good reliability (α = 0.859) and validity. The four-factor model outperformed a unidimensional model. Job burnout explained the greatest variance, while social media stress emerged as a significant factor in emotional health. Emotional labor scored highest among subconstructs, indicating frequent emotional regulation demands.

Implications for school health policy, practice, and equity: The scale offers a practical tool for monitoring teacher emotional health, guiding targeted interventions, and informing policies on workload, emotional intelligence training, burnout prevention, and digital communication boundaries, ensuring equitable support across regions.

Conclusions: The validated multidimensional scale captures both traditional and emerging emotional challenges in teaching, enabling culturally relevant strategies to improve teacher well-being and sustain educational quality.