The Job Stress-Job Burnout Relationship among Junior High School Teachers: Ambition as a Moderator

Abstract

Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations. Research on teacher stress has largely focused on student misbehavior, workload, time pressure, and role conflict and ambiguity. This study explores human-related stressors, and finds five key sources: administrators, colleagues, students, students’ parents, and the society. This study then examines the relationship between stress from the five stressors and job burnout. Ambition is adopted in this study as a moderator to test whether the positive relationship between stress and job burnout is weaker when teachers have high ambition. Results show that teachers who experience higher levels of stress from administrators, students, and students’ parents have higher levels of job burnout. However, teachers who experience higher levels of stress from colleagues and the society do not have higher levels of job burnout. The positive relationship between stress from students and job burnout is weaker when teachers have high ambition.