Search Results (5)

Burnout is psychological, physical, and emotional suffering that may affect students with low or inadequate resources to face stressful events at school. Although the existing instruments are used worldwide to assess school burnout risk, they show several flaws and mainly focus on the emotional facets of the syndrome. No previous studies have developed a multi-component tool to reveal students’ burnout by simultaneously analyzing cognitive, behavioral, and emotional problems. The central core of the current study is to adapt the Burnout Assessment Tool-Core symptoms (BAT-C; Schaufeli et al., 2020), comprising four subscales, exhaustion, mental distance, cognitive impairment, and emotional impairment, for a sample of Italian students. The factor structure, the reliability, and the validity of the scale are investigated. The participants are 745 middle school students (male, 52.2%; aged 9–13, M = 11.84, and SD = 1.21). Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the best fit of the second-order model (four first-order factors and one second-order factor). Specifically, four factors were loaded onto a main high-order factor, which constitutes the BAT-C. Our findings support the Italian adaptation of the BAT-C for students’ samples as a valid instrument for measuring the core symptoms of school burnout. Full article

This study aims to validate the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) adapted to the Italian education sector. Teacher burnout is physical and emotional pain, due to prolonged exposure to school-related stress factors. Previous research has abundantly proven that preventive assessment of teachers’ risk level for burnout may reduce adverse outcomes. In this regard, new assessment tools, able to bring together evidence from fifty years of research on this topic, were mainly used to monitor burnout-risk levels in the school context. For the present work, 846 Italian teachers (Female, 91.1%; M age = 47.52; SD = 9.94) were involved in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a four-factor structure for the core dimensions (BAT-C; exhaustion, mental distance, emotional impairment, cognitive impairment), and a two-factor structure for the secondary dimensions (BAT-S; psychological distress, psychosomatic complaints). The Italian version of the BAT-C and BAT-S has shown good internal consistency (respectively, α = 0.900 and ω = 0.913; α = 0.845 and ω = 0.857) and validity (all correlations between variables showed a p value < 0.01). Our findings support the Italian adaptation of the original version of the BAT as a valid instrument for measuring teachers’ burnout through principal and secondary symptoms. Full article

School burnout is considered an extreme form of maladjustment that can seriously undermine the academic path of students who are affected. Previous studies have focused on possible protective factors, highlighting the role of academic resilience, i.e., the ability to overcome chronic adversity in the school setting. Notwithstanding this, it is equally important to explore the role of the classroom environment and the satisfaction felt by the student toward relationships with teachers and classmates. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between academic resilience and burnout and to explore the moderating role of relationship satisfaction with teachers and classmates. A sample of 576 Italian students (Female = 53.1%), aged 14–18 (M = 15.73, SD = 1.56) were involved in the study. Correlations and moderated regressions analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses. The results show academic resilience and satisfaction as inversely related to school burnout. Furthermore, the satisfaction on the relationships with classmates moderated the relation between academic resilience and burnout. Findings were discussed by highlighting the importance of promoting both individual and contextual factors to prevent burnout risk. Full article

Academic resilience is the ability to overcome setbacks and chronic difficulties in the academic context. Previous studies have found that resilient students tend to be more engaged in school than their counterparts. Nevertheless, it seems worth deepening the role of contextual factors, such as teacher emotional support and how students perceive it, as it could contribute to foster the abovementioned relationship. The present study aimed to examine the links between academic resilience, perceived teacher emotional support, and school engagement. Moreover, the mediating role of perceived teacher emotional support was investigated. A sample of 205 Italian high school students (58.5% female), aged 14–19 years (M = 16.15, SD = 1.59), completed self-report questionnaires on academic resilience, perceived teacher emotional support, and school engagement. A structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the mediation hypothesis. The results showed that academic resilience was associated with perceived teacher emotional support, and both of them were related to school engagement. Furthermore, perceived teacher emotional support partially mediated the relationship between academic resilience and school engagement. Findings were discussed by underlining the importance of fostering personal and contextual resources in the school context to promote students’ well-being. Full article

School burnout is linked to relevant adverse consequences for students’ academic careers. Thus, several authors have focused on the internal and external factors that reduce burnout, highlighting the role of teachers’ support. Nonetheless, few studies addressed how students’ perception of teachers’ emotional support protects them from school maladaptive behaviors. The present study aimed to longitudinally investigate in a final sample of 295 Italian high school students (F = 78.6%; M = 15.78, SD = 1.48) the protective role of students’ perception of teachers’ emotional support dimensions on school burnout across a school year. We expected that teachers’ emotional support dimensions had a significant inverse effect on students’ burnout. We preliminarily investigated the study variables’ associations and whether the mean levels of burnout dimensions increased throughout the school year. Correlation analysis supported the associations among the study variables, and repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses highlighted that the mean levels of school burnout dimensions increased over time. Moreover, hierarchical multiple regression analyses have shown that at the beginning of the school year (T1), the teacher sensitivity dimension significantly and inversely affected emotional exhaustion by the end of the school year (T2). Our findings shed light on the role played by teacher emotional support and give suggestions on which specific facet should have to be improved to shield students from later burnout-related exhaustion. Full article