Understanding the New Stress Factors Affecting Teachers' Burnout: A Scoping Review

The teaching profession is extremely vulnerable to burnout. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic posed new threats and changed the educational environment as well as the perceptions and values of the teachers. The traditional in-person learning approach was quickly replaced by distant online learning to continue education. As schools re-opened, a new educational platform, the hybrid learning model, evolved by fusing the two learning models. The high expectations on teachers to swiftly adopt new teaching methods—often without the required resources or training—exacerbated their exhaustion. We conducted a scoping review to determine the new stress factors causing teachers' burnout following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 statement. A total of 27 studies were systematically reviewed, and we identified numerous stress factors affecting teachers' burnout. These stressors increased the already existing difficulties, magnifying their detrimental impacts. The stress factors were categorized as organizational, individual, transactional, emotional, cultural, and digital. This review suggests additional research to understand the prevalence of teacher burnout and how these stressors affect teachers' personal and professional lives over time. Despite these challenges, this study demonstrates the need for more in-depth future analysis to develop interventions to lessen teachers' burnout and support them in maintaining their professional lives.