Is individual- and school-level teacher burnout reduced by proactive strategies?

Abstract

There is provisional evidence that burnout may be contagious within professional communities via the crossover effect, referring to an inter-individual transmission of stress or strain. However, our understanding of effective means for tackling stressors is scarce. We tested a two-level path model to explore the interrelation between teachers’ proactive self- and co-regulative strategies and experienced burnout. The study sample comprised 1531 Finnish in-service teachers from 75 schools. The results showed that burnout symptoms varied both between individual teachers and between professional communities. Self- and co-regulative strategies serve partly different functions in regulating teacher burnout symptoms.