Teacher Burnout, Student-Teacher Relational Closeness, and the Moderating Effect of Work Stress Focused Supervision

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has been increasingly recognized as a valuable investment in the contemporary and future development of young children (Thorpe, 2020). Using the framework of the job demands-resources model (JD-R; Bakker et al., 2004), the current study examines the impact of teacher burnout and supervision on the student-teacher relationship in the domains of closeness and conflict among a sample of early childhood educators (teachers). Specifically, emotional exhaustion, is assessed among teachers as a reflection of occupational burnout, and student-teacher relationship quality is assessed in the domains of conflict and closeness, as well as related to teacher-student racial match. Additionally, teacher perceptions of supervisory support (around managing day to day task and supervisory support for work related stress) are explored as a potential moderator between teacher burnout and the student-teacher relationship in the domains of closeness and conflict. The study found that for closeness, students with a racial/ethnic match to their teachers were reported as having more closeness in their relationships (p = .003), though results related to conflict were insignificant. Higher teacher burnout was related to lower satisfaction with day-to-day tasks and work-related stress, and less frequent supervision. Results indicated that satisfaction with task supervision did not predict the intercept for closeness (p = .234) or conflict (p = .418). Similarly, satisfaction with stress-related supervision did not predict the intercept for student-teacher conflict (p = .350) or conflict (p = .598). Further, there was no moderation between supervision and stress, suggesting that satisfaction with task or stress-related supervision did not buffer the influence of burnout on student-teacher relationships. However, burnout was negatively correlated with satisfaction with both task and stress-related supervision in the current study, suggesting that there may still be value in examining these factors in tandem. Many questions remain about the mechanisms of supervision that may contribute to its impact and this study should not be interpreted as to discount the importance of supervision.