Emotional Labor Mediates the Relationship between Clan Culture and Teacher Burnout: An Examination on Gender Difference

Abstract

Teacher burnout is a psychological syndrome affecting many teachers across the globe. Therefore, numerous studies have investigated antecedents of teacher burnout in order to provide recommendations to alleviate it. Although the studies pay attention to either the role of environmental factors, such as school culture, or individual factors, such as gender, in contributing to teacher burnout, they less frequently examine how teacher burnout is concurrently influenced by both factors. Thus, this study aims to understand the relationship between clan culture and burnout by examining the mediation effect of emotional labor and the moderating effect of gender. A sample of 467 primary and secondary schoolteachers from China participated in this study. The result demonstrated the following: (1) clan culture was negatively related to teacher burnout; (2) deep acting mediated the relationship between clan culture and teacher burnout, while surface acting did not; (3) the mediating effect of deep acting was only significant in the female group of teachers, not the male group.