This study aims to identify combinations of job demands and resources that may cause or prevent elementary school teachers' burnout based on the Job Demands-Resources model. In the research model, conditions representing job demands include student-centered instructional planning, stress due to subject teaching, parental cooperation activities, and stress due to complaints raised by parents, and conditions for job resources includes teachers' decision-making authority, professional learning communities (PLCs), principal leadership, and trust with parents. Using data from “Korean Teacher Longitudinal Study: Elementary School Teacher(Ⅲ)”, this study applied qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to explore combinations of job demands and resources explaining teachers' burnout. Important findings are as follows. First, stress due to complaints raised by parents were shown as a major condition that contributes to teacher burnout. Also, the combinations including the absence of principal leadership or PLCs or trust with parents, and the combinations including the absence of student-centered instructional planning also led to burnout. On the other hand, the combinations including the absence of stress due to subject teaching, and the combinations including the existence of PLCs led to the prevention of teacher burnout. Lastly, the absence of stress due to complaints raised by parents was identified as an important condition in preventing emotional exhaustion which is the sub-component of burnout. In conclusion, the findings suggest the need for: (1) developing response strategies for complaints from parents, (2) creating supportive environments for student-centered instructional planning, and (3) providing policy support to strengthen cooperation and trust among educational stakeholders.
Kim et al. (Tue,) studied this question.