Protecting language teachers from burnout: The roles of teaching mindset,teaching grit,and emotion regulation

Abstract

Considering the demanding and stressful nature of the teaching profession in general and foreign language teaching in particular, teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) are prone to experience burnout, which may result in adverse consequences for not only teachers but also their students. Therefore, it is important to understand what factors can prevent EFL teachers from burnout. The present study investigated the roles of three individual difference factors, namely, growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation in EFL teachers’ burnout. The data were collected from 218 EFL teachers through convenience sampling. The results of regression analysis and relative weight analysis indicated that growth teaching mindset and teaching grit negatively predicted burnout. In addition, while reappraisal emotion regulation strategies were negative predictors of teachers’ burnout, suppression strategies were positive predictors of burnout. Implications regarding how to protect teachers against burnout are presented based on the findings of the study.

Keywords

burnout emotion regulation growth teaching mindset language teachers teaching grit

I Introduction

Burnout, as a common undesirable phenomenon in human-service occupations, causes employees to undergo excessive stress and tension while dealing with people. Teaching, as an interpersonally and emotionally demanding profession, requires frequent contacts with learners (Johnson et al., 2005), which can cause intense stress for teachers. Teachers are expected to satisfy high accountability demands under considerable time pressure while handling heavy workload which is usually accompanied by inadequate levels of infrastructure and social support (Pyhältö et al., 2011). Additionally, they might teach unmotivated students while managing their classes and maintaining order and discipline, coping with administration demands and educational changes, and experiencing role ambiguity and conflict as well as fear of evaluation by others (Kyriacou, 2001). Under such circumstances, they are prone to experience excessive amounts of stress at work, which, if not successfully coped with, may result in feelings of chronic stress and burnout (Jennett et al., 2003).

Burnout, defined as a psychological syndrome resulting from prolonged response to emotional and interpersonal stressors at work, may have adverse and undesirable effects on teachers’ teaching quality as well as their physical and psychological health (Maslach, 2015). Moreover, it is negatively associated with teachers’ job satisfaction, motivation, and career length (Leung & Lee, 2006). In addition, the stress and burnout experienced by teachers could be transmitted to the classroom atmosphere and learners, which may adversely affect teacher–student relationships and severely impact students’ well-being and achievement (Gluschkoff, 2017).

Learning a foreign or second language (L2) is a ‘unique and ego-threatening experience, different from other school subjects’ (Piechurska-Kuciel, 2011, p. 211). Consequently, L2 teaching is a demanding profession requiring a wide range of skills such as providing an interactive classroom context and teaching a subject (i.e., language) of which learners do not have full mastery (Borg, 2006). Since learning an L2 is a highly time-consuming and slow process, which deprives teachers of seeing the results of their own teaching in a short time, L2 teachers may feel stressed and incompetent and possibly experience burnout. Furthermore, L2 teachers usually confront several significant challenges such as ‘job insecurity, low wages, cultural differences, linguistic challenges, [low] level of confidence, and increased workload’ (Sudina et al., 2021, p. 6). Therefore, the nature of the L2 teaching profession might impose considerable stress on teachers, which may consequently lead to their burnout and even intentions to quit their job (Valeo & Faez, 2014).

A substantial body of research in education and educational psychology has examined the causes and consequences of burnout among teachers (see Capone et al., 2019; Madigan & Kim, 2021; Madigan et al., 2023). However, the theoretical and empirical literature of second language acquisition (SLA) has not generally paid adequate attention to this critical phenomenon among L2 teachers, and only a few studies have investigated burnout among L2 teachers (see Akbari & Eghtesadi Roudi, 2020; Ding et al., 2023; Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023; Zarrinabadi et al., 2023). Thus, given the debilitating role of burnout in teachers’ professional success (Yang, 2022) and that it may be linked to several individual difference and situational factors (see Chang, 2009), the present study aims to address this gap by investigating the possible roles of three key individual difference factors, namely, growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation in teachers’ burnout. These factors seem highly relevant as there is a convincing rationale based on both theoretical aspects and empirical studies justifying their influential role in burnout (see Section II). Moreover, we aim to examine the relative importance of each of these variables to investigate their predictive power in comparison with other variables. In what follows, we review the relevant literature about burnout and its links to growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation.

II Literature review

1 Burnout

Chronic interpersonal stressors in teaching might trigger a prolonged response among teachers, causing them to suffer from burnout. Burnout is among the undesirable factors that may seriously affect teachers’ professional life to the extent that they may decide to quit their job (Madigan & Kim, 2021; Maslach, 2015). Burnout, as a ‘psychological syndrome that develops in response to chronic emotional and interpersonal job stressors’, has been widely studied based on Maslach’s (2015) conceptualization (p. 929). According to Maslach et al. (2001), burnout has three major aspects: (1) emotional exhaustion, (2) depersonalization, and (3) inefficacy feelings. The first dimension, namely, emotional exhaustion, concerns overwhelming feelings of over-extendedness and depletion of physical and emotional resources, which could be characterized as having chronic fatigue and low energy. The depersonalization aspect refers to an individual’s excessive tendency to detach oneself motivationally and interpersonally from various aspects of their job, accompanied by cynical and negative attitudes and feelings toward the job. The third component is related to one’s feelings of inefficacy and incompetence at work (Maslach et al., 2001).

Burnout is related to different forms of job withdrawal such as absenteeism, tendency to leave the job, and turnover intention, which may result in lower productivity, effectiveness, job satisfaction, and commitment (Maslach, 2015). Moreover, it could be contagious and have an ‘spill-over effect’, meaning that individuals undergoing burnout might negatively affect their colleagues in informal interactions at work or even their spouses and family members (Brotheridge & Lee, 2006). In the teaching profession, burnout has been shown to be negatively linked to teachers’ motivation (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2020), job satisfaction (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010, 2020), self-efficacy (Capone et al., 2019), and mental health (Schonfeld & Bianchi, 2016). Additionally, the results of a recent systematic review indicates that teacher burnout is associated with students’ lower academic achievement and motivation (Madigan & Kim, 2021).

Burnout could be caused by a wide range of factors linked to one’s job environment and dispositional traits (Lee, 2015). At the organizational level, excessive work load as well as lack of control over and autonomy in one’s job might trigger burnout (Kokkinos, 2007; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010). In addition, reduced sense of community, trust, and support as well as poor reward and lack of or insufficient recognition can cause individuals to develop feelings of burnout (Maslach, 2015). Inequity and value conflict at work may also result in burnout among teachers. As for the dispositional factors, past studies have highlighted the role of teachers’ personality, negative affectivity, hardiness, and optimism (Alarcon et al., 2009). Additionally, other factors such as self-efficacy (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010) and teaching experience (Tsang et al., 2022) have been shown to affect burnout. Recent L2 research has shown that teachers’ burnout could be predicted by different individual difference factors including, but not limited to, self-efficacy (Mahmoodi et al., 2022), teaching style (Ghanizadeh & Jahedizadeh, 2016), feedback seeking behavior (Norouz Kermanshahi & Pishghadam, 2022), L2 proficiency (Nayernia & Babayan, 2019), perfectionism (Mahmoodi-Shahrebabaki, 2017), motivation (Song, 2022), grit (Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023), emotions (Khajavy et al., 2017), and growth mindset (Zarrinabadi et al., 2023).

2 Growth teaching mindset

Mindsets, or implicit beliefs about changeability and improvability of human attributes such as intelligence and personality (Dweck, 2017), have received considerable attention by researchers and scholars in both general education (Dweck & Yeager, 2019) and L2 education (Lou & Noels, 2019). Based on mindsets theory (Dweck, 2017), people may hold fixed or growth mindsets about their potentials and capabilities, which could possibly lead them in certain meaning-making processes. Individuals endorsing a growth mindset believe in the malleability and improvability of their skills through hard work whereas those subscribing to fixed mindsets consider them as fixed and immutable. In addition, growth-mindset individuals mostly have learning-oriented, rather than performance-oriented, goals. They consider challenges as opportunities for learning which could be dealt with via investing time and effort in their learning and using self-regulated learning strategies.

Mindsets are domain-specific, meaning that people could have different mindsets in different domains (Dweck, 2017). For this reason, researchers have investigated their role in various academic fields such as mathematics (Bui et al., 2023), foreign languages (Hejazi et al., 2023; Mercer & Ryan, 2010; Sadoughi et al., 2023), and science (J.A. Schmidt & Shumow, 2020) as well as their potential in guiding people in different occupations such as engineering (João & Silva, 2020) and nursing (Chu et al., 2021). In the field of education, most research on mindsets has examined students’ mindsets or, at most, teachers’ beliefs about learning a subject-matter (Nalipay et al., 2021) while neglecting teachers’ beliefs about the malleability and changeability of their teaching skills and competences, i.e., their teaching mindsets (Frondozo et al., 2022; Nalipay et al., 2022).

Recent research indicates that teachers subscribing to a growth teaching mindset are more satisfied with their profession and more autonomously motivated and engaged, make more investments in their professional development, and have higher levels of well-being (Fives & Buehl, 2008; Frondozo et al., 2022; Nalipay et al., 2021, 2022). Interestingly, the results of a study by Zarrinabadi et al. (2023) indicates that growth-mindset teachers experience lower levels of burnout and higher levels of professional identity and personal accomplishment. Moreover, having a growth mindset directs people in regulating their (positive and negative) emotions, taking actions to promote their skills and feel more competent, adopting learning rather than performance goals, and consequently being more engaged and absorbed in their tasks (Dweck, 2017). It could be the case that teachers endorsing a growth mindset about their teaching competence may experience lower levels of emotional exhaustion, inefficacy, and depersonalization and thus less burnout in their job. Considering that holding a growth mindset may be associated with higher levels of engagement (Zeng et al., 2019) and positive emotions (Frondozo et al., 2022; Liu et al., 2023), we propose that teachers subscribing to a growth teaching mindset may experience less burnout. Therefore, the first hypothesis of this study could be formulated as follows:

• Hypothesis 1: Growth teaching mindset negatively predicts burnout.

3 Teaching grit

Grit, defined as sustained passion and perseverance to reach major long-term goals, is a non-cognitive personality trait which enables individuals to vigorously pursue their goals over an extended time period despite challenges and difficulties (Duckworth et al., 2007). As the definition indicates, grit has two major components, namely, consistency of interest and perseverance of effort (Duckworth et al., 2007). According to a series of studies conducted by Duckworth et al. (2007), grit could be a stronger predictor of success than intelligence quotient (IQ) in different domains. With regard to academic achievement in general and L2 achievement in particular, mixed findings have been obtained. For example, some studies have found significant relationships between grit and academic or language achievement (Hodge et al., 2018; Teimouri et al., 2022) while others have not found such a relationship (Khajavy et al., 2021). Some researchers have argued that one possible reason for lack of this link can be related to the domain-specific nature of grit (Cormier et al., 2019). This means that a person can have high levels of grit in one domain but low levels of grit in another. For example, a person might be gritty to become a successful basketball player but might not be gritty to learn an L2. The domain-specificity of grit has been supported by several studies in different domains such as math (F.T. Schmidt et al., 2017) and L2 learning (Teimouri et al., 2022). One important implication of the domain-specificity of grit can be linked to its measurement. The most common scale for measuring grit is Grit-O scale (Duckworth et al., 2007) and its short version, Grit-S (Duckworth et al., 2009). The studies that did not find significant relationships between grit and achievement have mostly relied on domain-general grit scale, while domain-specific measures of grit have shown stronger and more significant relations with academic and L2 achievement (e.g., Cormier et al., 2019; Teimouri et al., 2022).

Most of the previous studies have focused on (L2) learners’ grit, and less attention has been given to (L2) teacher’s grit. Teaching is considered as a very stressful occupation imposing enormous psychological demands on teachers (Johnson et al., 2005), and teachers should be committed to their job so that they can maintain their effort and interest in their career. Moreover, given the demanding nature of teaching an L2 (see Borg, 2006; Piechurska-Kuciel, 2011; Sudina et al., 2021), teachers need to do their best for keeping themselves interested in teaching and persevering while tackling hurdles and challenges in their career. This means that grit can be an important factor for effective language teaching.

Following recent research highlighting the role of grit in different professions such as nursing (Cortez et al., 2020) and teaching in general (e.g., Baraquia, 2020; Fabelico & Afalla, 2020), scanty but burgeoning research has particularly emphasized the role of this non-cognitive factor in L2 teaching over the past few years (e.g., Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023; Sudina et al., 2021). Therefore, L2 teaching grit was conceptualized as an occupation-specific type of grit for language teachers and was defined as perseverance and passion for language teaching (Sudina et al., 2021). Moreover, two L2 teaching grit scales have been developed (Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023; Sudina et al., 2021) which provide an occupation-specific scale for measuring of grit among L2 teachers. The thinner body of research on L2 teaching grit, in comparison to the bulk of research on L2 learner grit (see Fathi & Hejazi, 2023; Hejazi & Sadoughi, 2023; Zhao & Wang, 2023), indicates the potential link of teaching grit with factors such as immunity (Azari Noughabi et al., 2022), engagement (Azari Noughabi et al., 2022; Fathi et al., 2023; Liu et al., 2023), turnover intentions and wellbeing (Derakhshan et al., 2022; Nazari & Alizadeh Oghyanous, 2021), resilience (Derakhshan et al., 2022), and enjoyment (Derakhshan et al., 2022; Fathi et al., 2023; Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023).

Therefore, based on the findings of the previous research, teachers with higher levels of grit can successfully tackle professional challenges, remain interested in their job (Robertson-Kraft & Duckworth, 2014; Sudina et al., 2021), have higher levels of work engagement, and enjoy teaching more. These findings mean we can expect that higher levels of teaching grit be related to lower levels of burnout (see also Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023). Thus, the second hypothesis of this study could be developed as:

• Hypothesis 2: Teaching grit negatively predicts burnout.

4 Emotion regulation

Teaching is an ‘emotional practice’ (Hargreaves, 2001) and teachers have numerous interactions with students. Therefore, teachers experience a wide variety of emotions which may influence the classroom environment, their social relationships, and students’ outcomes (Morris & King, 2023). A recent review on the consequences of teachers’ emotions (Chen, 2021) indicates that they may impact not only the students and the learning process but also the teaching process and the teachers themselves. Chen (2021) classifies these consequences to four categories: (1) students’ learning processes and outcomes, (2) learners’ well-being, engagement, and motivation, (3) teaching methods and classroom management, and (4) teachers’ own effectiveness, engagement, well-being, professional beliefs, and motivation. Therefore, it is highly essential for teachers to efficiently regulate their emotions, which may have a wide range of significant consequences on their emotional experience, cognition, decision-making, well-being, and social relationships (Kim et al., 2015).

Emotion regulation is defined as attempts for changing or, more specifically, maintaining, decreasing, or increasing the experience and expression of unpleasant and pleasant emotions (Kim et al., 2015). In fact, emotions are regulated in processes through which ‘we influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express them’ (Gross, 2002, p. 282). As Wang et al. (2023) maintain, teachers may regulate their emotions for instrumental purposes (e.g., enhancing their teaching effectiveness) as well as hedonic purposes (e.g., experiencing internal satisfaction). There are two major types of emotion-regulation strategies (Gross, 1998), namely, antecedent-focused (i.e., occurring before emotions are expressed; e.g., reappraisal) and response-focused (i.e., happening after emotional responses are generated; e.g., suppression). Both these strategies have been found to be linked to student engagement (Burić & Frenzel, 2021) and well-being (Braun et al., 2020).

Teaching an L2 requires knowledge about not only the language system but also the target culture, which may involve different challenges and emotional experiences (Tsang & Jiang, 2018) making it an emotionally demanding profession. Therefore, it is highly essential that L2 teachers regulate their emotions so as to maximize their teaching effectiveness. Recent L2 research has shown that using emotion regulation strategies is linked to higher levels of engagement (Greenier et al., 2021), success (Li & Lv, 2022), and psychological well-being (Xiyun et al., 2022) as well as lower levels of burnout (Ghanizadeh & Royaei, 2015) among teachers. Given the findings of studies indicating that teachers’ ability to regulate their emotions may act as an important psychological resource which has the potential to substantially enhance their resilience in stressful teaching situations (Brackett et al., 2010; Kostoulas & Lämmerer, 2020), we hypothesize that using emotion regulation strategies may influence teachers’ burnout.

Past research has indicated that the two major emotion-regulation strategies (i.e., antecedent-focused strategies such as reappraisal, and response-focused strategies such as suppression) may demonstrate differential effectiveness. For example, while some studies have shown the higher overall effectiveness of reappraisal strategies, in comparison to suppression strategies, for increasing positive emotions and reducing negative emotions (e.g., Gross & John, 2003; Jiang et al., 2016), others have found that both reappraisal and suppression strategies may play a buffering role and thus be negatively related to burnout in teachers (Ghanizadeh & Royaei, 2015). Therefore, as the results of previous research on the role of these two types of strategies are inconclusive, we propose the third hypothesis of the study as follows:

• Hypothesis 3: Teachers’ emotion regulation strategies predict their burnout.

5 The present study

Given the above review of the literature, the purpose of the current study is to investigate the role of teachers’ growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation in their burnout. With regard to the growth mindset, perceptions about changeability and improvability of one’s skills and abilities can play a key role in directing and guiding individuals in their studies and work (Dweck, 2017). As to teachers, their beliefs about malleability of their teaching abilities (i.e., their teaching mindset) may have a significant role in how they view their teaching abilities and skills. Based on the growth mindset literature and its implications for competence, emotions, and engagement (see Dweck, 2017), it follows that teachers endorsing a growth teaching mindset may take measures for enhancing their teaching skills to feel more competent, regulate their emotions to experience more positive and less negative emotions, and take learning, rather than performance goals. Therefore, we could assume that they may be more engaged in their job, which could result in experiencing lower levels of burnout. Moreover, as teaching an L2 is a demanding profession requiring teachers’ passion and perseverance (i.e., grit) in their career (Sudina et al., 2021), being grittier may help teachers become more engaged and thus reduce their burnout (Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023). Finally, given the fact that teaching is an ‘emotional practice’ (Hargreaves, 2001) and that teachers are ‘emotional practitioners’ (Teng, 2017) who experience a wide range of emotions in their job, their attempts to promote and decrease their positive and negative emotions, respectively, may result in reduced levels of stress and in turn less burnout. Examining the potential contribution of the aforementioned variables in burnout can provide an integrated and theoretically informing account of the relationships between them and help design effective interventions for reducing and even preventing burnout among L2 teachers.

III Method

1 Participants and procedure

A total of 218 Iranian EFL teachers teaching intermediate levels in private language centres (47% males & 53% females; age range: 23–41 years, mean age = 29.7) were selected through convenience sampling in Iran during winter 2022. Based on Tabachnick and Fidell’s (2013) formula (50 + 8 × independent variables), this sample size could be considered sufficient for ensuring the reliability of the regression analysis.

A questionnaire containing two sections was distributed among the participants. The first section requested teachers’ demographic characteristics such as age and gender. The items in the second section assessed the participants’ burnout, growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation strategies. The survey was performed in-person, and the respondents were allowed sufficient time (20–30 minutes) to complete the questionnaire. The participants gave their informed consent and were assured about the anonymity and confidentiality of their data. The exclusion criteria were refusal to give informed consent and unwillingness to continue the study. Given that 220 questionnaires were administered and two ones were returned as incomplete, a response rate of 99% was achieved.

2 Measures

This sub-section presents information regarding the scales such as the number of items and sample items. In addition, more detailed information about the validity and reliability of the instruments are provided in Section V.1. All items were measured on a five-point Likert scale.

a Burnout

Maslach and Jackson’s (1981) burnout questionnaire was slightly adapted to assess teachers’ burnout in this study by making its items relevant to the L2 teaching profession. There are 22 five-point Likert scale items in this questionnaire measuring different dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion (nine items; e.g., ‘I feel frustrated by teaching English.’), depersonalization (five items; e.g., ‘I don’t really care what happens to some of my students.’), and reduced personal accomplishment (eight items; e.g. ,‘I can easily create a relaxed atmosphere with my students.’). This scale has been extensively used for measuring L2 teachers’ burnout (e.g., Ghanizadeh & Ghonsooly, 2014; Nayernia & Babayan, 2019; Song, 2022) and has shown to be a highly valid and reliable tool (e.g., Ghanizadeh & Ghonsooly, 2014).

b Growth teaching mindset

To evaluate teachers’ growth teaching mindset, five items were adapted from Nalipay et al.’s (2022) questionnaire which was developed based on Dweck’s (2017) mindsets scale. The items were slightly modified so that they would fit the L2 teaching context. There are two items measuring growth teaching mindset (e.g., ‘You can learn to change how well you teach English.’) and three items evaluating fixed teaching mindset (e.g., ‘You can learn new techniques for teaching English, but you cannot really change how good you are as an L2 teacher.’). The items measuring fixed teaching mindset were scored reversely to create a single growth teaching mindset score. The reliability and validity of the scale has been established in previous research (Frondozo et al., 2022; Nalipay et al.,2022).

c Teaching grit

Teaching grit was measured by nine five-point Likert-scale items adopted from Sudina et al. (2021). This questionnaire has two sub-scales assessing teachers’ perseverance of effort (PE) (five items; e.g., ‘I am a hardworking ESL/EFL teacher.’) and consistency of interest (CI) (four items; e.g.,‘My level of interest in teaching ESL/EFL changes from year to year.’). Sudina et al. (2021) reported adequate internal-consistency reliability and construct validity for this scale. Additionally, it had acceptable concurrent and predictive validity since its items were highly correlated with domain-general Grit–S items and L2 teacher retention-related scores (Sudina et al., 2021).

d Emotion regulation

Gross and John’s (2003) scale was employed to measure teachers’ emotion regulation strategies. In this questionnaire, there are six items measuring reappraisal strategies (e.g., ‘When I’m faced with a stressful situation, I make myself think about it in a way that helps me stay calm.’) and four items assessing suppression strategies (e.g., ‘I control my emotions by not expressing them.’). The participants were asked to respond to questionnaire items with respect to their L2 teaching profession. Gross and John (2003) confirmed the construct validity and high reliability of this questionnaire. Moreover, it is noteworthy that this instrument has been widely utilized by researchers for assessing L2 teachers’ emotion regulation strategies (e.g., Greenier et al., 2021).

3 Data analysis

The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, version 22) was used for analysing the data. The distribution pattern of the missing data was first checked, and then they were imputed. Next, we checked univariate outliers by Z-standardized values and scatter plots and examined multivariate outliers by computing Mahalanobis distances (Meyers et al., 2016). Additionally, average variance extracted (AVE) was used to check the convergent validity of the measurement model, and Fornell–Larcker criterion and heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) ratios were employed to examine its discriminant validity. Moreover, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and composite reliability (CR) were used to assess the reliability of the research instruments. Finally, multiple linear regression analysis was carried out for predicting burnout from growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation as well as the demographic characteristics of the teachers. Given that the standardized beta coefficient is not a suitable measure for detecting the importance of the predictor variables (see Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2015), we also used Relative Weight Analysis (RWA) as a supplementary analytical technique to investigate the predictive roles of growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation in burnout by RWA web (Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2015). Considering that ‘multicollinearity makes the partitioning of variance among multiple correlated predictors difficult’ (Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2015, p. 207), using standardized regression weights in multiple regression may not be an accurate method for assessing the importance of the predictors in the criterion variable (Mizumoto, 2023). RWA can transform the predictors to newly created ones which do not have correlations with each other (Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2015). Hence, RWA is more accurate than standardized regression coefficients for investigating the relative weight of predictors in the criterion variable (Mizumoto, 2023).

IV Results

1 Preliminary analysis

Little’s test was performed for checking the missing data, and the results demonstrated that the data were missing completely at random (MCAR) (χ² ₍₅₂₈₎ = 541.44, p = .33). Thus, to restore the missing data, Expectation Maximization (EM) method was used as an iterative algorithm for imputation by maximum likelihood estimation (Little & Rubin, 2019). Regarding univariate outliers, since two cases had Z-standardized values which were not between −3 and +3, they were regarded as outliers and winsorized. No multivariate outliers were detected based on Mahalanobis distances (Meyers et al., 2016). Considering that the skewness and kurtosis values were between −2 and +2, the univariate normality assumption was not violated (Kunnan, 1998).

Table 1 shows the results of assessing the validity and reliability of the instruments. Given that AVE values are > .5, HTMT ratios are < .85, and the square root of each variable’s AVE is higher than the correlations of that variable with other variables (Fornell–Larcker criterion), the instruments have convergent and discriminant validity. Furthermore, since the values of composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient exceeded .70 for all variables (Riazi, 2016), the instruments had acceptable reliability.

Table1.

Fornell–Larker criterion and heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) ratios, convergent validity, and reliability of the instruments.

Latent constructs	Burnout	Growth teaching mindset	Teaching grit	Reappraisal strategies	Suppression strategies	CR	AVE	α
Burnout	.837	.589	.674	.820	.659	.876	.701	.788
Growth teaching mindset	–.497	.800	.714	.507	.317	.899	.640	.860
Teaching grit	–.563	.607	.664	.573	.417	.875	.441	.838
Reappraisal strategies	–.668	.430	.476	.731	.411	.873	.535	.826
Suppression strategies	.533	–.271	–.359	–.345	.789	.869	.623	.799

Notes. The values (in bold) on the diagonal are the square root of the AVE values. The values below the diagonal indicate the correlations between the constructs. The values above the diagonal show the HTMT ratios.

2 Descriptive statistics

Table 2 presents descriptive statistics including means, standard deviations, kurtosis, and skewness as well as the zero-order bivariate Pearson correlations. Correlations in Table 2 indicate that the majority of the constructs are moderately to strongly correlated with each other. Of the predictors, growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and reappraisal strategies of emotion regulation were strongly and negatively associated with burnout. Suppression strategies of emotion regulation were also strongly and positively associated with burnout.

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation coefficients.

Construct	Mean	Possible range	SD	Skewness	Kurtosis	1	2	3	4
1. Burnout	48.10	22–110	13.98	.741	–.022	1
2. Growth teaching mindset	17.25	5–25	4.10	–.079	–.695	–.503**	1
3. Teaching grit	31.56	9–45	6.14	–.289	–.390	–.570**	.606**	1
4. Reappraisal strategies	20.15	6–30	4.19	–.115	–.261	–.671**	.429**	.474**	1
5. Suppression strategies	10.05	4–20	3.25	.350	.336	.534**	–.259**	–.335**	–.338**

Note. ** p < .01.

3 Multiple regression analysis

The relations between the dependent variable and independent variables were investigated by Pearson’s r, indicating that these relations were linear. As shown in Table 3, the VIF values are lower than 2 and the tolerance values exceed .5 supporting lack of collinearity between the independent variables (Kleinbaum et al., 2013). The Durbin–Watson statistic was 2.18, which is within the acceptable range (i.e., 1.5 - 2.5), confirming no autocorrelation between the errors (Turner, 2020).

Table 3.

Results of regression analysis of the effects of the independent variables on burnout.

Variables	B	Std. Deviation	β	t	p	Tolerance	VIF	R	R²
Constant	78.916	6.464	–	12.209	< .001	–	–	.789	.622
Gender	–.141	1.181	.005	–.118	.906	.993	1.007
Age	.225	.125	.077	1.809	.072	.995	1.009
Growth teaching mindset	–.418	.186	–.123	–2.251	.025	.605	1.657
Teaching grit	–.433	.129	–.190	–3.364	.001	.560	1.786
Reappraisal strategies	–1.440	.168	–.433	–8.593	< .001	.708	1.417
Suppression strategies	1.260	.198	.293	6.360	<.001	.845	1.183

To examine the possible predictors of burnout, a multiple regression analysis was performed in which the sum scores of the continuous variables (growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and reappraisal and suppression strategies) as well as gender and age were entered.

The model significantly predicted burnout accounting for 62.2% of the variance (R² = .622, F_{(6, 211)} = 57.81, p < .001), which indicates a large effect size (Cohen’s f² = 1.64). As shown in Table 3, reappraisal strategies (β = −.43, p < .001), teaching grit (β = −.19, p < .001), and growth teaching mindset strategies (β = −.12, p = .025) are significant negative predictors of burnout while suppression (β = .29, p < .001) is a positive predictor of burnout. In other words, in the regression model, higher levels of reported reappraisal strategies, teaching grit, and growth teaching mindset are linked to less burnout. However, lower levels of suppression strategies are associated with more burnout.

Moreover, as beta coefficients obtained from regularized regression are not considered as an adequate index for detecting the importance of predictors due to multicollinearity issues (Mizumoto, 2023), Relative Weight Analysis (RWA) was performed for investigating how growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and reappraisal and suppression strategies could predict burnout (Table 4). As shown in Table 4, reappraisal strategies (RW = .249), suppression strategies (RW = .153), teaching grit (RW = .124), and growth teaching mindset (RW = .091) have a significant contribution to teachers’ burnout reflecting similar patterns in multiple regression. Reappraisal strategies, which account for 40.02% of the overall explained variance in teachers’ burnout, is the strongest predictor of burnout. We further found that the raw relative weight of reappraisal strategies was significantly larger than that of other variables in predicting burnout. Following reappraisal strategies, suppression strategies, teaching grit, and growth teaching mindset had almost similar contributions to burnout. More specifically, they explained 24.56%, 19.92%, and 14.57% of the overall explained variance of burnout, respectively. No significant difference was found in raw relative weights of these variables (i.e., suppression strategies, teaching grit, and growth teaching mindset) as predictors of burnout. Figure 1 shows the relative weight plot of the predictors of teachers’ burnout with 95% confidence interval.

Table 4.

The results of Relative Weight Analysis (RWA) for teachers’ growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and reappraisal and suppression as predictors of teachers’ burnout.

	RW (95% CI)	Significance testing (95% CI)	RS–RW (%)
Gender	.0006 (.00003 – .0011)	–.0324 – .0049	.09
Age	.005 (.0005 – .0224)	–.0244 – .0171	.82
Growth teaching mindset	.091* (.0488 – .1358)	.0439 – .1362	14.57
Teaching grit	.124*** (.0754 – .1745)	.0704 – .1800	19.92
Reappraisal strategies	.249*** (.188 – .316)	.1796 – .3131	40.02
Suppression strategies	.153*** (.0975 – .2075)	.0916 – .2079	24.56

Notes. RW = relative weight, RS–RW = re-scaled relative weight. * p < .05. *** p < .001.

Figure 1.

The relative weight plot of the predictors of teachers’ burnout with 95% confidence interval.

V Discussion

Considering the stressful nature of teaching in general and the demanding nature of L2 teaching in particular, this study was undertaken to examine the roles of three individual difference factors, namely, growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation strategies, in predicting L2 teachers’ burnout. The findings showed that teachers’ growth teaching mindset and teaching grit negatively predicted their burnout (Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2). Additionally, reappraisal and suppression emotion regulation strategies predicted teachers’ burnout negatively and positively, respectively (Hypothesis 3).

As for Hypothesis 1, the results demonstrated that teachers’ beliefs about malleability of their teaching competence could negatively predict their burnout. In order words, teachers holding higher levels of growth teaching mindset may experience lower levels of burnout. This result is partially in line with past research showing that teachers with stronger beliefs about improvability of their teaching abilities are more engaged in their teaching profession (Nalipay et al., 2021), which can be due to experiencing more positive emotions and less negative emotions (Frondozo et al., 2022). Consequently, when teachers are highly engaged in their job, they may experience reduced levels of burnout (Bermejo-Toro et al., 2016). This finding also supports Zarrinabadi et al.’s (2023) results in which growth teaching mindset predicted personal accomplishment.

This finding could be discussed in light of Dweck’s (2017) mindset theory. Generally, having a growth mindset is associated with certain beliefs about one’s competence, emotional tendency, and engagement. Since growth-mindset individuals consider their abilities as improvable, they may exert substantial effort and devote sufficient time to enhance their skills. As to teachers, those who hold growth beliefs about their teaching abilities tend to highly value teaching knowledge and skills and thus implement significant measures such as performing professional development activities for promoting their skills (Fives & Buehl, 2008). Therefore, they are more likely to be engaged and feel competent, which in turn makes them less prone to experience a sense of inefficacy as a major dimension of burnout. Regarding emotional tendency, people with growth mindsets generally feel more positive emotions (e.g., enjoyment) and less negative emotions (e.g., anxiety) as they are optimistic about their role in improving their skills and competence with practice and effort (Dweck, 2017; Frondozo et al., 2022). Therefore, it would be logical to expect that teachers endorsing a growth mindset about their teaching competence would enjoy their teaching, feel less stressed, and consequently undergo decreased emotional exhaustion. Finally, as subscribing to a growth mindset enables individuals to adopt learning rather than performance goals (Dweck, 2017), teachers with a growth teaching mindset may be more engaged in improving their teaching competence and skills. In fact, these teachers may feel closely related to their job, learners, and colleagues and undergo less depersonalization.

Regarding Hypothesis 2, the findings showed that teaching grit negatively predicted teachers’ burnout, which is consistent with the results of scanty research examining the relationship between grit and burnout among employees in service companies (e.g., Kristinsson et al., 2023) and among L2 teachers (Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023). As gritty teachers are passionate and enthusiastic about their job, they can better cope with stressors and remain interested in teaching (Robertson-Kraft & Duckworth, 2014). Thus, grittier teachers may be better able to sustain their interest and efforts in pursuing their professional goals and effectively tackle challenges and hurdles in their teaching career. Moreover, the relation between L2 teachers’ teaching grit and their burnout can be explained by considering the emotional effects of grit. Previous research has shown that higher levels of L2 teacher’s grit is related to experiencing more enjoyment and less anxiety and boredom (Derakhshan et al., 2022; Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023), which could in turn reduce burnout. In fact, grit would act as a protective factor against burnout and help significantly reduce it (Soleimanzadeh et al., 2023; Sudina et al., 2021).

As for Hypothesis 3, the findings showed that reappraisal and suppression strategies could negatively and positively predict teachers’ burnout, respectively, which is in line with the results of Fathi et al.’s (2021) study. It should be noted that reappraisal strategies had a more significant role in predicting burnout in comparison with other predictors, which further highlights the importance of reappraisal strategies in preventing burnout. Reappraisal strategies are used for reinterpreting the meaning of emotional stimuli so as to change their negative impact while suppression strategies are used for inhibiting the ongoing expression of emotions. In other words, reappraisal strategies affect emotional tendencies earlier than suppression strategies in emotion generation processes, which could partly justify why they are more effective and adaptive (Gross & John, 2003).

Given that suppression is a type of response-focused strategy which is implemented late in the regulatory process, it might require considerable cognitive effort, which could justify why it is mostly considered as undesirable, unhealthy, ineffective, and conducive to burnout (Chang, 2020). In fact, it is highly probable that suppression leads to exhaustion since it does not completely omit the experience of negative emotions and uses cognitive resources. Using suppression strategies may decrease the expression of positive emotions, increase the expression of negative emotions, reduce well-being, and worsen interpersonal functioning, which may consequently trigger job dissatisfaction and burnout among teachers (Gross & John, 2003).

Previous research has shown a negative relationship between cognitive reappraisal strategies and teacher burnout (Chang, 2020). Moreover, it has supported the greater effectiveness of reappraisal strategies, compared to suppression strategies, in changing emotional experiences (Webb et al., 2012), leading to better interpersonal performance and well-being (Gross & John, 2003). Reappraisal strategies can enhance both the experience and expression of desirable, positive emotions while reducing both the experience and expression of negative emotions (Gross, 1998), which can result in increased personal accomplishment (Brackett et al., 2010). As these strategies are generally healthier than suppressive strategies (Gross & John, 2003) among different populations including teachers (Chang, 2020), it seems warranted that teachers who cognitively reappraise a stressful situation may have more optimistic attitudes and higher chances of recovering from their emotional stress. Therefore, they are less likely to undergo unpleasant and undesirable emotional experiences and suffer from depressive symptoms (Troy et al., 2010).

VI Implications of the study

Findings of the present study can provide some helpful implications for both research and practice. Based on the findings, various actions are recommended to be taken for fostering growth beliefs about teaching competence among L2 teachers. For example, during in-service and pre-service teacher education programs, teachers may be informed about the advantages of adopting a growth teaching mindset and be provided with effective guidelines for its promotion. Additionally, it is suggested that supervisors and managers of language institutes underscore the importance of growth teaching mindset by creating a workplace culture that values growth and progress and by providing teachers with encouraging comments and constructive feedback about their ongoing progress and performance.

As to grit, given its changeable nature, some measures can be taken for its improvement. Previous research has indicated that fostering a growth mindset can be linked to higher grit among both learners (Dweck et al., 2014; Khajavy et al., 2021; Sadoughi & Hejazi, 2023) and teachers (Liu et al., 2023). Therefore, teachers’ growth mindset can be developed not only to reduce burnout directly but also to improve grit, which can in turn reduce burnout. Goal commitment has also been introduced as another factor contributing to grit (Tang et al., 2019) as when people are committed to their goals, they would have more grit to achieve them. For this purpose, valuing teaching, providing a supportive work environment, and having positive work experiences can promote goal commitment among teachers (Tang et al., 2019). Moreover, language centers can hold seminars to introduce successful teachers and ask them to uncover their strategies for remaining gritty in their L2 teaching career.

Regarding emotion regulation, language institutes are suggested to establish an emotionally-balanced and supportive environment and implement measures such as organizing workshops to increase teachers’ awareness about the importance of emotions and provide them with essential guidelines on how to efficiently use emotion regulation strategies. Furthermore, as knowledge about emotions has a crucial role in effective emotion regulation, it is suggested that teachers’ awareness of ‘what emotions are, what gives rise to them, what their consequences are, and how they can be modified’ be raised (Kim et al., 2015, p. 454).

VII Limitations and suggestions for future research

The present study has some limitations related to the data collection and research design. As the data were collected using only questionnaires, future studies may use qualitative techniques such as interview or think-aloud protocol to provide a more in-depth account of the data. Moreover, given the cross-sectional design of this study as well as the dynamic nature of the variables under investigation in this study (e.g., grit: Elahi Shirvan et al., 2021; and burnout: Dunford et al., 2012; Peeters & Rutte, 2005), it is suggested that further research use a longitudinal design to more precisely capture their dynamic development. Additionally, meticulous care is required when generalizing the findings of this study since this research was undertaken among ‘L2 teachers’ working in a ‘foreign language context’.

As the contributions of only individual difference variables were considered in the present study, it would be interesting to take into account the role of factors related to workplace environment such as classroom context and organizational support and investigate their interaction effects. Furthermore, since L2 teaching requirements are different depending on the teaching context (e.g., university, school, and language institutes), studies can compare the contributions of different factors to teachers’ burnout based on the context.

Considering that beliefs about feasibility of emotion regulation is a major factor in its implementation (Kim et al., 2015), future research may take into account teachers’ mindsets about emotions (i.e., their beliefs about whether their emotions are controllable and could be changed). Another line of research may investigate the role of teachers’ beliefs about their capability to regulate their emotions (i.e., their self-efficacy) since self-efficacy beliefs, according to self-determination theory, could have a significant contribution to how people encounter different realities (Bandura, 1997).

VIII Conclusions

This study was conducted to investigate the roles of growth teaching mindset, teaching grit, and emotion regulation in L2 teachers’ burnout. Findings indicated that all these three factors can be linked to burnout, though the role of reappraisal emotion regulation strategies was more salient. We believe that these findings can help teachers, researchers, language institute managers, and teacher trainers gain better insights into factors that can affect burnout. Consequently, appropriate measures could be taken to handle burnout among L2 teachers.

Footnotes

Authors’ contribution

All authors had equal contributions.

Data availability

Data could be available upon fair request.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Informed consent

The participants’ informed consent was gained.

ORCID iDs

Majid Sadoughi

S. Yahya Hejazi

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