Occupational Stress, Burnout, and Health in Teachers: A Methodological and Theoretical Analysis

The health effects of teacher stress and teacher burnout are reviewed separately in this article. Although the literature generally lends support to the hypothesis that occupational stress and burnout are associated with poor health in teachers, confidence in this conclusion is weakened by the serious methodological and conceptual difficulties that pervade this area of research. In particular, reliance on cross-sectional retrospective designs, exclusive dependence on self-report measures, and failure to adopt a theoretical framework as a guide for empirical investigations are identified as major threats to the validity of the findings reported. It is concluded that this area of research is ready for a shift to theory-based investigations that test causal models of teacher stress and health with more sophisticated research designs and measurement strategies.