With the diverse roles expected from teachers, teachers are being exposed to stress continuously and heavy stress may lead to burnout. Because the stress level perceived in similar environment is different among individuals, research has been conducte...
With the diverse roles expected from teachers, teachers are being exposed to stress continuously and heavy stress may lead to burnout. Because the stress level perceived in similar environment is different among individuals, research has been conducted on variables mediating between job stress and burnout. This study was conducted to see the role of emotional intelligence among the variables involved in the process that school teachers’ job stress influences their burnout, aiming to examine the mediating effect of emotional intelligence on the relation between elementary school teachers’ job stress and burnout.
For this purpose, we set research questions as follows.
First, what is the relation between elementary school teachers’ job stress and emotional intelligence?
Second, what is the relation between elementary school teachers’ job stress and burnout?
Third, what is the relation between elementary school teachers’ emotional intelligence and burnout?
Fourth, does emotional intelligence have a mediating effect on the relation between elementary school teachers’ job stress and burnout?
The subjects of this study were 187 elementary school teachers in Incheon and Gyeonggi‐do, and the scales used for this study are as follows. Job stress was measured with the scale used in previous research of Kyriacou & Sutcliffe (1978) and Truch (1980), restructured by Kim Jeong‐hwi (1992), and revised by Park Yeong‐ran (2006). Emotional intelligence was measured with the emotional intelligence test for adults developed by Mun Yong‐rin (1999) based on the advanced emotional intelligence model by Mayer & Salovey (1997). Burnout was measured with MBI (Maslach Burnout Inventory) developed by Maslach & Jackson (1981) and translated by Kim Jeong‐hwi (1992) and Kang Hak‐gu (1996). Collected data were analyzed using SPSS 12.0. The relations among the variables were analyzed through correlation analysis, and the mediating effect of emotional intelligence was tested through regression analysis.
The results of this study are summarized as follows.
First, in the results of correlation analysis among job stress, emotional intelligence and burnout, all three variables showed statistically significant correlations. Job stress had a positive correlation with burnout. Emotional intelligence had a negative correlation with burnout, and job stress had a negative correlation with emotional intelligence.
Second, job stress predicted emotional intelligence statistically significantly. In addition, job stress explained burnout significantly, and emotional intelligence predicted burnout statistically significantly. When the mediating effect of emotional intelligence on the relation between job stress and burnout was examined, the explanatory power of job stress alone for burnout was lower than that of both job stress and emotional intelligence. That is, emotional intelligence had a partial mediating effect on the relation between job stress and burnout.
This study is meaningful in that it confirmed the relations and the path of influence among elementary school teachers’ job stress, burnout and emotional intelligence. According to the results, emotional intelligence was found to have a partial mediating effect on the relation between elementary school teachers’ job stress and burnout. Accordingly, it is considered helpful for reducing teachers’ burnout to apply interventions for developing emotional abilities related to emotional intelligence.
Key words: emotional intelligence, job stress, burnout