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Ubiquitous emotional exhaustion in school principals : Stable trait, enduring autoregressive trend, or occasion-specific state?
Dicke, Theresa Parker, Philip D. Guo, Jiesi Basarkod, Geetanjali Marsh, Herbert W. Deady, Mark Harvey, Samuel Riley, Philip
Dicke, Theresa
Parker, Philip D.
Guo, Jiesi
Basarkod, Geetanjali
Marsh, Herbert W.
Deady, Mark
Harvey, Samuel
Riley, Philip
Abstract
Principal strain and burnout is a major issue in desperate need of further investigation and solutions. Deepening our understanding of emotional exhaustion, the central dimension of burnout, would greatly further this pursuit. Using a large, longitudinal, representative sample of Australian school principals, the present study decomposed emotional exhaustion into occasion-specific state, enduring autoregressive, and stable trait components using the STARTS (stable trait, autoregressive trait, and state) model. The results showed evidence for variance in all three components, indicating that principals’ emotional exhaustion is approximately evenly split between the enduring autoregressive component and stable trait component, with slightly less variance being observed for the occasion-specific state. Heterogeneity in this profile was mainly associated with individual characteristics of the principals themselves (i.e., experience and gender) rather than characteristics of the job (school sector and level). The results revealed that less experienced and male principals have more malleable (enduring autoregressive and state-like) emotional exhaustion, while more experienced and female principals have more trait-like emotional exhaustion. This emphasizes a likely development of emotional exhaustion from acute to chronic under persistent exposure to burnout-inducing situations, with additional evidence for a possible dispositional tendency toward emotional exhaustion. Thus, measures to tackle emotional exhaustion need to be based on the type of emotional exhaustion the principal is experiencing and ideally include elements that target both the situational/contextual and the individual factors that cause emotional exhaustion in school principals.
Keywords
emotional exhaustion, STARTS model, school principals, state, trait
Date
2022
Type
Journal article
Journal
Journal of Educational Psychology
Book
Volume
114
Issue
2
Page Range
426-441
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Positive Psychology and Education
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as green open access
License
File Access
Controlled
Open
Open