Chapter 10: Relationship of Teachers’ Preventive Coping Resources to Burnout Symptoms

Many teachers find the demands of being a professional educator in today’s schools difficult and at times stressful. Current models of stress assume that when a potentially threatening event is encountered, a reflexive, cognitive balancing act ensues, weighing the perceived demands of the event against one’s perceived ability to deal with them. Accordingly, teacher stress may be seen as the perception of an imbalance between demands at school and the resources teachers have for coping with them. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between preventive coping resources and burnout in elementary and preschool teachers. Results indicated that preventive coping resources are related to symptoms of burnout in teachers, and implications for burnout prevention are discussed.