Primary School Teachers´Resilience: Association with Teacher Self-Efficacy, Burnout and Stress

Introduction. International literature indicates that self-efficacy and resilience are interrelated and they both predict teachers’ burnout and stress. In order to better understand their intertwining relationship, the present study was conducted to test the hypothesis that resilience mediates the effect of efficacy beliefs to burnout and stress.Method. Participants were 636 Greek primary education teachers. The Multidimensional Teacher Resilience Scale (MTRS; Mansfield & Wosnitza, 2015), the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach & Jackson, 1986), the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001) and the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983) were used to collect the data. All scales were adapted to Greek and tested for their psychometric properties.Results. The results partially confirmed our hypothesis showing that three of the resilience subscales, Social-Professional Resilience, Adaptability and Motivational Resilience, partially mediated the relationship of self-efficacy with burnout and stress. Out of the four resilience subscales, Emotional Resilience was found to fully mediate in the above relationship and had the strongest predictive power over burnout and stress.Discussion and Conclusion. The findings are discussed in light of recent evidence in the field and their implications for practice and future research are pointed out.