Teacher Stress and burnout: a study using MIMIC modelling

Abstract

A number of recent studies carried out in the education sector have re- vealed the incidence of burnout in school environments and have highlighted the principal psycho-social sources of burnout syndrome among teachers. This study attempts to look further at the results of a previous research car- ried out on a sample of 882 italian teachers. Using advanced statistcal tech- niques such as MIMIC modelling, it intends to verify whether the following psycho-social stress factors are significant as predictors: interpersonal rela- tions, workload, organisational conflict, role ambiguity, perceived role image, work-home interface. The scales we have adopted are the Maslach Burnout Inventory MBI-ES and the Cooper’s occupational stress indicator (Cooper, Sloan & Williams, 2009) specifically adapted for Italian schools. Results have shown the clear predictive role of factors such as interpersonal conflict and home-work interface in determining the onset of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization among teachers.