Teaching styles and burnout: A short-term longitudinal study

Abstract

The aim of this short-term longitudinal study was to investigate the associations between teaching styles and burnout. The participants, 73 teachers, were asked to answer the Teaching Styles Questionnaire and the Cuestionario de Burnout del Professorado twice, with a three-months gap; both instruments were presented in their Portuguese version. Results point to the stability of teaching styles and lowered personal accomplishment, but not of emotional exhaustion. Also, we found negative associations between authoritative teaching and burnout and positive associations between permissive teaching and burnout. Only the lowered personal accomplishment facet of burnout was significantly predicted by authoritative and permissive teaching. The implications of this study suggest the importance of preventing burnout, namely by aiding teachers in developing more efficacious teaching styles (e.g., authoritative). The authoritative style is considered as ideal, having in mind its correlation with higher levels of work accomplishment and lower levels of emotional exhaustion.