Research On Job Burnout, Job Characteristics, And Teaching Efficacy Of Middle School Teachers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among job burnout, job characteristics and teaching efficacy of middle school teachers in Mainland China. That's to say, it was intended to prove that job characteristics were the predictive factors of job burnout. Furthermore, this study aimed to find out that teaching efficacy could mediate and moderate the relationship between job characteristics and job burnout.This study was composed of two parts: The first part was to construct and revise the scales. It was based on the previous study and interview study as well as the principles of psychological testing. The revised scales included: (1) Job-Burnout Scale for Teachers (JBS-T); (2) Job Characteristics Inventory of Middle School Teacher (JCI-MST). The second part was to establish the predictive model of job burnout. Data was collected from samples from middle school teachers and the procedures of data processing were as follows: To analyze the relationship between job characteristics and job burnout by building up Structural Equation Modeling; To explore the mediating and moderating effects of teaching efficacy by using path analysis and hierarchical regression analysis; To study whether subjects' characteristics could affect job burnout by using independent-sample t test and one-way analysis of variance.The main conclusions of this study were:1) The revised Job-Burnout Scale for Teachers in this study included three subscales, namely: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and diminished personal accomplishment. The reliability and validity of all subscales were good. The JBS-T can be used for the study on job-burnout of teachers.2) The Job Characteristics Inventory of Middle School Teacher in this study measured the job characteristics of middle school teachers by eight aspects: workload, role conflict and ambiguity, examination stress, students' misbehavior, job pay, job autonomy, supervisory support and colleague support. The reliability and validity of all subscales were good. The JCI-MST can be used for the study about job characteristics of middle school teachers.3) Job demands significantly predicted emotional exhaustion; Job resources significantly predicted all the three dimensions of job burnout.4) Teaching efficacy could mediate the relationships between job demands and emotional exhaustion as well as between job resources and the three components of job burnout.