The Job Stress-Job Burnout Relationship among Junior High School Teachers: Ambition as a Moderator
Abstract
Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations. Research on teacher stress has largely
focused on student misbehavior, workload, time pressure, and role conflict and ambiguity.
This study explores human-related stressors, and finds five key sources: administrators,
colleagues, students, students’ parents, and the society. This study then examines the
relationship between stress from the five stressors and job burnout. Ambition is adopted in
this study as a moderator to test whether the positive relationship between stress and job
burnout is weaker when teachers have high ambition. Results show that teachers who
experience higher levels of stress from administrators, students, and students’ parents have
higher levels of job burnout. However, teachers who experience higher levels of stress from
colleagues and the society do not have higher levels of job burnout. The positive relationship
between stress from students and job burnout is weaker when teachers have high ambition.