Associations between childhood trauma, perceived resilience, and teacher burnout

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how teacher burnout symptoms can be explained by childhood trauma and perceived resilience. Self-assessment surveys, designed to measure adverse childhood experiences, ability to bounce back after hardship, and burnout symptoms, were completed by 146 kindergarten through 12th-grade U. S. public school teachers. Structural equation modelling analysis revealed a significant indirect relationship between burnout symptoms and childhood maltreatment mediated by perceived resilience, with 49% of the variation in self-reported burnout symptoms accounted for by the model. Results suggest that a perceived sense of resilience helps teachers diminish the negative impact of childhood trauma and lessen symptoms of burnout.

KEYWORDS:

• Occupational stress
• job satisfaction
• adverse childhood experiences
• teacher characteristics
• structural equation modelling
• industrial psychology

Highlights

• Teachers having more childhood trauma report less perceived resilience.

• Teachers having more childhood trauma report more burnout symptoms.

• Teachers with more perceived resilience report fewer burnout symptoms.

• Teacher burnout symptoms are significantly related to childhood maltreatment mediated by perceived resilience.

• A sense of resilience may help teachers cope with childhood trauma and lessen symptoms of burnout.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no actual or potential conflict of interest to disclose, including any financial, personal, or other relationships with other people or organisations within 3 years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, this work.

CRediT author statement

All authors materially participated in the research and/or manuscript preparation, and approved the final article. Gregory J. Benner: Methodology, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Data curation, Writing—Review and Editing. Lisa A. Strycker: Writing—Review and Editing, Formal analysis. Lisa A. Berry: Conceptualisation, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing—Original Draft. Amanda J. Logan: Conceptualisation, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing—Original Draft. Erica O. Lee: Writing—Review and Editing.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.