Abstract

School burnout is linked to relevant adverse consequences for students’ academic careers. Thus, several authors have focused on the internal and external factors that reduce burnout, highlighting the role of teachers’ support. Nonetheless, few studies addressed how students’ perception of teachers’ emotional support protects them from school maladaptive behaviors. The present study aimed to longitudinally investigate in a final sample of 295 Italian high school students (F = 78.6%; M = 15.78, SD = 1.48) the protective role of students’ perception of teachers’ emotional support dimensions on school burnout across a school year. We expected that teachers’ emotional support dimensions had a significant inverse effect on students’ burnout. We preliminarily investigated the study variables’ associations and whether the mean levels of burnout dimensions increased throughout the school year. Correlation analysis supported the associations among the study variables, and repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses highlighted that the mean levels of school burnout dimensions increased over time. Moreover, hierarchical multiple regression analyses have shown that at the beginning of the school year (T1), the teacher sensitivity dimension significantly and inversely affected emotional exhaustion by the end of the school year (T2). Our findings shed light on the role played by teacher emotional support and give suggestions on which specific facet should have to be improved to shield students from later burnout-related exhaustion.

Highlights

  • School burnout is a syndrome of physical, cognitive, and emotional exhaustion due to a chronic over-exposure to high levels of academic stress [1]

  • School burnout is composed of three dimensions, i.e., emotional exhaustion, a cynical attitude toward school, and feelings of inadequacy as a student [1,2,3]

  • Emotional exhaustion refers to a sense of chronic fatigue and being overwhelmed by school-related pressures

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Summary

Introduction

School burnout is a syndrome of physical, cognitive, and emotional exhaustion due to a chronic over-exposure to high levels of academic stress [1]. School burnout is composed of three dimensions, i.e., emotional exhaustion, a cynical attitude toward school, and feelings of inadequacy as a student [1,2,3]. Emotional exhaustion refers to a sense of chronic fatigue and being overwhelmed by school-related pressures. Recent studies have considered emotional exhaustion as the core dimension and first sign of this syndrome (e.g., [4,5,6]). Several authors posited that it represents a coping strategy to counteract and distance from the burnout-related emotional exhaustion, predicting the subsequent feeling of inadequacy [4,6,7,8]. Previous studies highlighted that the three burnout dimensions overlap, further studies have demonstrated that they are separate but closely linked constructs [4,11]

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