Crossover of burnout in the classroom – Is teacher exhaustion transmitted to students?

It has been proposed that well-being or lack of it can spread within tightly knit communities, including classrooms. Yet, to our knowledge, no studies have explored the crossover of burnout between the teachers and the students. In this study, we explored the relationship between teacher exhaustion and students’ study burnout symptoms. We hypothesized that teacher exhaustion is likely to be transmitted to students in classroom interaction both directly and via students’ perceptions of reduced social support from the teacher. A total of 1550 Finnish fifth-grade students from 104 classes and their teachers (N = 104) participated in the study. Multilevel structural modeling was applied to explore whether teacher exhaustion can cross over within classroom settings, i.e., whether it is related to their students’ study burnout levels and students’ perceptions of decreased social support. The findings indicated that teacher exhaustion contributed to higher levels of cynicism among the students. Interestingly, the teacher exhaustion was not related to the teacher support reported by their students. The perceived teacher support buffered the students’ study burnout at both individual and classroom levels. The findings imply that teachers’ well-being and the perceived social support from teachers play important roles in student well-being.