Impact of stress, welfare and social support on burnout in teachers

Abstract

Being a teaching profession where there are high levels of stress and burnout. This study aimed to analyses the impact of psychological well-being and stress, as well as the perception of social support, on burnout in regular education teachers who work with students with special educational needs and special education teachers. The sample consists of 464 teachers, of which 345 (74.4%) are regular teachers and 119 (25.6%) special teachers. The results show that for the stress in the regular education group are men who express a higher level, while the special education group, are women. They were also identified differences in well-being and perceived social support, and these results have been obtained for special education teachers, men and women, respectively. Regarding the burnout, differences were observed in gender and qualifications, and these were verified on the regular education teachers’ group and in the special education group. The results allow us to emphasize that psychological well-being has a more positive impact on the protection of both groups of teachers against burnout. In the group of regular education teachers, stands out the relevance of well-being and social support as protective factors of emotional exhaustion in female teachers, while for male teachers are the emotional dependence and the balance (well-being) that assumes this role. In special education teachers, for female teacher’s stands out the importance of wellbeing (happiness and control of self and events) as protective of emotional exhaustion and self-esteem as a protective factor against the depersonalization, while in male teachers of this group are the dimensions of well-being - control of oneself and events and happiness - the factors with the most protective impact of emotional exhaustion. At the end of the study, we highlight the impact of these results on policies and practices to promote teachers' health and well-being, differently according to gender and professional intervention area.