Teacher Stress and Teacher Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Engagement, Emotional Exhaustion, and Motivation to Leave the Teaching Profession

The purpose of this study was to explore how seven potentially stressful school context variables (potential stressors) predicted senior high school teachers’ experiences of teacher self-efficacy, emotional stress, emotional exhaustion, engagement in teaching, and motivation to leave the teaching profession. A total of 523 Norwegian teachers in senior high school participated in the study. Four of the potential stressors were significantly but differently related to self-efficacy and emotional stress and indirectly to emotional exhaustion, engagement, and motivation to leave the profession. The study shows that different potential stressors predict emotional exhaustion, engagement, and motivation through different psychological processes. SEM-analysis indicated two main routes to teachers’ motivation to leave the profession: 1) one route from time pressure via emotional stress and exhaustion to motivation to quit and 2) another route from lack of supervisory support and trust, low student motivation and value conflicts via lower self-efficacy and lower engagement to motivation to quit.