An Integrative Approach to Burnout in Secondary School Teachers: Examining the Role of Student Disruptive Behaviour and Disciplinary Issues

The aim of this paper is to examine from an integrative approach to what extent occupational stressors when in combination with other variables that have accredited their explicative value in accounting for teacher distress in other domains (personal, psychosocial and outside the occupational sphere) contribute to predicting and/or explaining the different components of burnout. The sample consists in 1386 secondary education teachers. The statistical results obtained confirm for all dimensions in the syndrome the explanatory role of occupational stressors related with student disruptive behaviours/attitudes and disciplinary issues (conflict management and lack of support/consensus). The remaining variables in the study (Type A pattern, optimism, hardiness, friend and family support, life events) also contribute to accounting for burnout, albeit to a lesser extent than occupational factors. Results not only confirm the suitability of the selected variables but also the necessity to design integration studies in which, besides another type of determinants, to include variables from the occupational domain. In other words, our findings suggest that student disruptive behaviour, the difficulties experienced by teachers in managing conflict and the lack support/consensus as regards disciplinary actions are ‘necessary’ ingredients if we are to successfully predict burnout in secondary school teachers.