519

British Journal of Educational Psychology (2015), 85, 519–532

© 2015 The British Psychological Society
www.wileyonlinelibrary.com

The relationship between teacher burnout and

student motivation
Bo Shen1*, Nate McCaughtry1, Jeffrey Martin1, Alex Garn2,
Noel Kulik1 and Mariane Fahlman1
1
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA
2
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
Background. Teacher burnout is regarded as a serious problem in school settings. To
date, studies on teachers’ stress and burnout have largely centred on teachers’ own
characteristics, socialization, and behaviours, but few have explored the connection
between teachers’ burnout and students’ motivation via their own perceptions of
teachers’ behaviour and emotional well-being.
Aims. This study adopted Maslach et al.’s (2001, Annu. Rev. Psychol., 52, 397) job burnout
construct and self-determination theory to investigate the relationships between
teachers’ burnout and students’ autonomous motivation over one-semester physical
education classes.
Sample. A total of 1,302 high school students and their 33 physical education teachers in
20 high schools from two school districts in a major Midwest metropolitan area in the
United States. The two school districts were demographically similar.
Methods. Students and physical education teachers completed questionnaires assessing
relevant psychological constructs. There were two time points for collecting students’
data. One was at the beginning of a fall semester, and the other was at the end of that
semester. Hierarchical linear modelling analyses were conducted.
Results. It was revealed that teachers’ emotional exhaustion was negatively related to
students’ perceived teacher autonomy support (TAS); in turn, there was a negative
relationship between teachers’ feeling of depersonalization and students’ autonomous
motivation development even when controlling for inadequate TAS.
Conclusion. The dimensions of teachers’ burnout might play different roles in the
transmission from teachers to students. Teachers’ status of burnout is an important
environmental factor associated with students’ quality of motivation.

Teacher burnout is regarded as a serious problem in school settings (Blandford, 2000).

Researchers from different countries (e.g., Carson, Plemmons, Templin, & Weiss, 2011;
Koustelios & Tsigilis, 2005; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001) have documented that
teachers’ burnout may dramatically reduce their quality of life and lead to deterioration
in teaching efficiency. Feelings of burnout are a critical factor associated with teachers’
absenteeism and job turnover (Whipp, Tan, & Yeo, 2007). To date, studies on teachers’
stress and burnout have largely centred on teachers’ own characteristics, socialization,
and behaviours, but few have explored the connection between teachers’ burnout and

*Correspondence should be addressed to Bo Shen, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48103, USA (email: boshen@wayne.edu).

DOI:10.1111/bjep.12089
520 Bo Shen et al.

students’ motivation via their own perceptions of teachers’ behaviour and emotional
well-being. This study was designed to address this shortcoming. Specifically, we
adopted constructs from Maslach et al.’s (2001) job burnout construct and self-
determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000), to investigate the relationships physical
education teachers’ burnout and their students’ autonomous motivation in physical
education.

Teachers’ burnout
Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal
accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with people in some
capacity (Maslach et al., 2001). It is the result of a gradual process of disillusionment
(Pines, 1993). According to Maslach et al. (2001), emotional exhaustion is the central
quality of burnout, representing feelings of being emotionally overextended and
exhausted. Of the three aspects of burnout, exhaustion is the most widely reported,
and a necessary criterion for burnout (Maslach et al., 2001). Depersonalization is the
development of negative, callous, and cynical attitudes towards the recipients of one’s
services. It is an attempt to distance oneself emotionally and cognitively from the
recipients by ignoring the qualities that make them unique and engaging people.
Additionally, reduced personal accomplishment reflects negative feelings of competence
and achievement and a tendency to evaluate oneself negatively with respect to work.
Maslach et al. (2001) proposed that reduced personal accomplishment is more likely to
emerge from a lack of relevant resources or inefficacy, whereas exhaustion and
depersonalization result from work overload and social conflict.
Researchers have examined the negative consequences of burnout. Manifestations of
burnout not only appear at the individual level, but also at the interpersonal level
(Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003). At the individual level, burnout undermines professionals’
intrinsic motivation, zeal, enthusiasm and career idealism. At the interpersonal level, this
deeply rooted motivational crisis is reflected by indifference and discouragement
(Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998). Additionally, Swider and Zimmerman (2010) studied
burnout dimensions as mediators of the relationship between personality and job
performance. They found that burnout dimensions had moderate correlations with
different personality traits and could directly influence job performance. Similar results
were shown in Ghorpade, Lackritz, and Singh (2007).
In educational settings, Maslach and Leiter (1999) developed a working model of
teacher burnout, suggesting burnout contributes to both teachers’ and students’
behaviour and experience. It presumes a process in which the experience of emotional
exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment shapes teachers’
behaviour. As teacher burnout increases, both the thoroughness of classroom preparation
and the involvement in classroom activities decline while student criticism increases. In
response, students are likely to change their perception of the teacher, their feelings
towards the teacher, and their behaviour in the classroom. Consequently, students’ sense
of efficacy in school often declines. Furthermore, teacher burnout reduces students’
intrinsic motivation, which may diminish learning and engagement.
The manifestation of teachers’ burnout in instructional behaviour has been explored.
For example, using both teachers’ self-reports on their burnout symptoms and student
rating on teachers’ burnout symptoms, Evers, Tomic, and Brouwers (2004) demonstrated
that teachers’ burnout symptoms are recognized by their students. Moreover, Klusmann,
Kunter, Trautwein, L€ udtke, and Baumert (2008) reported significant correlations
 Burnout and autonomous motivation 527

Table 2. Multilevel models for prediction of students’ perceived teacher autonomy support (TAS) at T2

Model 1

Variable Coefficient SE b Variance

Fixed effects
c00 Intercept 4.36 .13
c01 Emotional exhaustion
.147** .034
.20
c02 Depersonalization
.031 .098
.03
c03 Reduced personal accomplishment .028 .115 .01
c04 T1 TAS (mean) .157** .024 .30
c10 T1 TAS (student) .164** .013 .42
c20 Gender: male
.09 .08 .03
c30 Age
.07* .03 .10
Random effects
Between-class mean, l0j .11**
Within-class effect, rij 1.09

Note. Subscript j = students; subscript i = classes.

Values in the tables are unstandardized.
*p < .05; **p < .01.

regression coefficient relationship between teachers’ emotional exhaustion and T2 TAS.

Also, a positive regression coefficient relationship was found between aggregated mean of
T1 TAS and individual T2 TAS. The explained variance (R2) in the outcome variable, by the
level 2 predictor variables was .131.

Teachers’ burnout and students’ autonomous motivation

With the significant predictive role of teachers’ burnout for students’ perceived TAS, we
further examined the extent to which teacher burnout predicted T2 autonomous
motivation. We tested Model 2 with T1 students’ individual perceived TAS, T1 students’
autonomous motivation, age and gender as level 1 predictors.
Results are shown in Table 3. The intercept of the slope coefficient, c10, which
represents the effect of T1 RAI, was significantly related to T2 RAI. Similarly, the intercept
of the slope coefficient, c40, which represents the effect of T1 TAS, was also related to T2
RAI. The overall variance (R2) explained by the level 1 predictor variables was .251,
suggesting that students’ background characteristics explained 25.1% of the variance in
T2 RAI at the within-class level. At the between-class level, a negative regression
coefficient relationship was found between teachers’ depersonalization and T2 RAI.
There was a positive regression coefficient relationship between aggregated mean of T1
TAS and T2 RAI. The explained variance (R2) in T2 RAI, by the level 2 predictor variables
was .075.

Discussion
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between teachers’ burnout
and students’ autonomous motivation. The multilevel analyses demonstrated that
teachers’ burnout was negatively associated with students’ autonomous motivation. It
is supported that teachers’ burnout is an important environmental factor explaining
522 Bo Shen et al.

might provide students with necessary information and encourage them to use the
information to solve a problem in their own way, whereas a controlling teacher would
pressure students to behave in particular ways through coercive techniques that generally
include implicit or explicit rewards and punishments (Bryan & Solmon, 2007). The
importance of an autonomy-supportive context on student motivation and learning has
been recognized in physical education. Shen, McCaughtry, Martin, and Fahlman (2009)
investigated the effects of American high school students’ perceived teacher autonomy
support (TAS) on their need satisfaction adjustment, learning achievement, and
cardiorespiratory fitness. They found that perceived TAS significantly predicted students’
need satisfaction adjustment and led to learning achievement, especially for students who
were not autonomously motivated to learn in physical education. Similar results were
shown in Shen (2010).

Purpose of the study

Roth, Assor, Kanat-Maymon, and Kaplan (2007) argued that psychological states or
orientations could spread from teachers to students. By inferring about teachers’
psychological states and reasons for engaging in teaching, students can elicit expectations
with regard to quality of task engagement and quality of interpersonal relationships
(Radel, Sarrazin, & Legrain, 2010). Given the fact that burnout is ‘a psychological
syndrome in response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job’ (Maslach et al., 2001,
p. 399), it is reasonable to assume that teachers’ emotional and psychological exhaustion
could contaminate students’ perception of the educational interaction and diminish their
autonomous motivation.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between teachers’
burnout and students’ autonomous motivation in physical education. Two research
questions were posed. First, to what extent would teachers’ burnout predict students’
perceived TAS? Given that teachers’ emotional health about their occupation is an
important factor influencing their instructional styles (Roth et al., 2007), we hypothe-
sized that teachers’ burnout would result in students with low perception of their
teachers’ autonomy support. Second, to what extent would teachers’ burnout predict
students’ autonomous motivation? Based on the argument that students’ willingness to
learn tasks is sensitive to the quality of interpersonal relationships (Radel et al., 2010), we
hypothesized that teachers’ burnout would have independent and unique variance in the
explanation of students’ autonomous motivation, even when controlling for their
perceived TAS.

Methods
Participants
Participants included 1,452 ninth and tenth graders (754 females and 698 males, age
range = 14–18 years, mean age = 15.9 years) who were recruited while participating
in their required high school physical education classes, and their 33 physical
education teachers in 20 high schools from two school districts in a major Midwest
metropolitan area in the United States. The two school districts were demographically
similar. A majority of the students came from a low to a lower middle socioeconomic
background. The sample was representative of the ethnicity demographics for the
student population in the area (55% Caucasian, 35% African American, 8% Hispanic
American, and 2% others). Teachers (14 females and 19 males; 60% African American
 Burnout and autonomous motivation 523

and 40% Caucasian) were certified and had teaching experience ranging from 8 to
30 years (mean = 14.38 years, SD = 6.50 years). Of the 1,452 student participants
who participated at Time 1 (T1), 150 did not participate at Time 2 (T2: 4 months later)
due to relocation to different schools or classes. Preliminary analyses revealed that
mean differences were not present in any of the study variables for completers and
non-completers at T1. The final sample consisted of 1,302 students (673 females and
629 males).
This study was part of a project that was designed to examine the effectiveness of the
Michigan Exemplary Physical Education Curriculum (EPEC) in high school settings. The
EPEC is a standards-based curriculum designed by the Michigan Governor’s Council on
Physical Fitness, Health, and Sports to promote the teaching of knowledge, skills, and
attitudes in physical education class (Michigan Fitness Foundation, 2005). Students had a
90-min physical education class every other day throughout the semester, and class size
ranged from 28 to 40 students.

Procedure
Permission to conduct the study was granted prior to the investigation from the university
review board, the schools’ principals, the physical education teachers, the students, and
the students’ parents. The overall response rate for student participants was 80.7%.
Student data collection was conducted during regular physical education classes. To
support the presence of the relation between teachers’ burnout and students’ perceived
autonomy support and autonomous motivation, a longitudinal research design including
autoregressive influence is necessary (Gollob & Reichardt, 1991). There were two time
points for collecting students’ data. The T1 assessment (i.e., T1 students’ perceived TAS
and T1 autonomous motivation) took place during the first 2 weeks at the beginning of a
fall semester. The T2 assessment (i.e., T2 students’ perceived TAS and T2 autonomous
motivation) occurred during the last 2 weeks at the end of that semester (about 4 months
after T1). Teachers’ burnout data were collected during required professional develop-
ment workshops, which were conducted within the first month of the semester. The
workshops focused on how to implement EPEC and how to enhance students’ motivation
and engagement in school physical education.
A data collection team included eight retired physical education teachers. The team
was responsible for distributing pencils and questionnaires at the beginning of a class and
collecting and checking them after completion. Participants were encouraged to respond
as truthfully as they could. They were ensured that their responses would not affect their
grades and their teachers would not have access to their responses.

Variables and measures

Teachers’ burnout
The educator’s version of the 22-item Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI-ES; Maslach et al.,
2001) was used to measure teachers’ perceptions of burnout. The item wording was
adapted to be applicable to physical education classes. Researchers (e.g., Boles, Dean,
Ricks, Short, & Wang, 2000; Kokkinos, 2007) have validated the proposed components of
burnout at different educational levels.
The MBI-ES contains three subscales: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and
personal accomplishment. Each of these three scores is measured using questions
answered with a 7-point frequency scale, and the answers range from 0 to 6 (0 = never;
524 Bo Shen et al.

1 = a few times a year; 2 = once a month; 3 = a few times a month; 4 = once a week;
5 = a few times a week; 6 = every day). The emotional exhaustion subscale has nine
questions measuring fatigue, frustration, and stress during teaching in physical education.
An example item from the subscale is ‘I feel fatigued when I get up in the morning and
have to face another day teaching physical education’. The subscale of depersonalization
contains five items that describe a lack of feeling and impersonal response towards
students. An example item is ‘I feel I treat some students in my physical education classes
as if they were impersonal objects’. The eight items in the personal accomplishment
subscale describe feelings of competence and the efficacy of the teachers’ own work. An
example item is ‘I have accomplished many worthwhile things in teaching physical
education’. We reverse-coded the reduced personal accomplishment scores to match the
consistency of the results (McCarthy, Kissen, Yadley, Wood, & Lambert, 2006). Higher
mean scores in each subscale correspond to higher degrees of burnout, while lower mean
scores correspond to lower burnout. The internal consistency reliability coefficients
(Cronbach’s alpha) were .76 for the subscale of emotional exhaustion, .70 for
depersonalization, .73 for diminished accomplishment in this study.

Students’ perceived TAS

The 6-item Learning Climate Questionnaire (LCQ) (Williams & Deci, 1996) was adapted to
assess physical education students’ perceived TAS. Specifically, the measure addressed
students’ perceptions about whether physical education teachers provided choice and
rationale about physical education, as well as acknowledged personal perspectives and
conveyed confidence in students’ personal abilities to solve a problem in their own way in
physical education. An example item from the scale is ‘I feel that my physical education
teacher gives me choice and options’. Responses were indicated on a 7-point Likert scale
anchored by 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree). Williams and Deci (1996) found
that the LCQ has a single underlying factor with high internal consistency (a = .96). In this
study, Cronbach’s alphas were .83 and .87 at T1 and T2, respectively.

Autonomous motivation
A 12-item perceived locus of causality questionnaire adapted from Ryan and Connell
(1989) was used to assess students’ degree of autonomous motivation in physical
education. Based on the degrees of perceived autonomy, each of the four behavioural
regulations (i.e., external, introjected, identified, and intrinsic) was measured with three
items. Each item followed the stem ‘I take part in physical education. . .’ Example items
were ‘because I will get in trouble if I do not’ (external regulation), ‘because I want the
teacher to think I am a good student’ (introjected regulation), ‘because physical education
is important to me’ (identified regulation), and ‘because physical education is fun’
(intrinsic motivation). Cronbach’s alphas for the four subscales ranged from .72 to .85 for
T1 and from .74 to .88 for T2.
To get an overall indicator of relative autonomous motivation for learning, we used the
relative autonomy index (RAI) weighting system (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000; Roth et al.,
2007; Ryan & Connell, 1989). In this system, the various motivations are assigned weights
representing the sense of autonomy they are assumed to reflect (
2,
1, for external and
introjection, respectively, and +1 and +2 for identified and intrinsic, respectively). The RAI
was computed in the following way:
 Burnout and autonomous motivation 525

RAI ¼ ð2  IntrinsicÞ þ ðIdentifiedÞ
ðIntrojectedÞ
ð2  ExternalÞ:

Data analyses
Data were initially screened for missing values, outliers, and distribution properties. By
checking Skewness and Kurtosis indices, we found that all scores were overall normally
distributed. Reliability of the questionnaire data was examined using Cronbach’s (1951)
approach for internal consistency. With the nested nature of students within teachers in
the data, hierarchical linear modelling analyses were conducted using HLM6 (Raudenbush
& Bryk, 2002). Due to small number of sampled teachers, the models in this study were fit
with the restricted maximum likelihood estimates.
As an initial step, an intercept-only model was conducted to partition the variance of
the dependent variable (i.e., T2 students’ autonomous motivation [RAI]) into between-
class and within-class components. This model is unconditional for calculating the
intraclass correlation. The intraclass correlation was .16 for T2 autonomous motivation. It
is indicated that over 16% of the variance of T2 dependent variables was between
teachers. These non-zero intraclass correlation provided justification for using hierarchi-
cal models to answer the research questions.
To examine the extent to which teachers’ burnout predicted T2 students’ perceived
TAS (question 1), we tested Model 1 with both level 1 and level 2 predictors included
simultaneously. In Model 1, we added T1 individual students’ perceived TAS, age, and
gender as level 1 predictors and added the three dimensions of teacher burnout (i.e.,
emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment) and
aggregated mean of T1 perceived TAS as level 2 predictors. The aggregated measure of T1
perceived teacher support was included because it could yield a more comprehensive
assessment of the perceived classroom environment than do individual factors (L€ udtke,
Robitzsch, Trautwein, & Kunter, 2009). The mean of students’ individual perceptions of
TAS was calculated in each teacher. To examine the extent to which teacher burnout
predicted T2 autonomous motivation (question 2), we tested Model 2 with T1 individual
students’ perceived TAS, T1 students’ autonomous motivation, age and gender as level 1
predictors, while the three dimensions of teacher burnout and aggregated mean of T1
perceived TAS as level 2 predictors.

Results
Preliminary analyses
Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations are presented in Table 1. Throughout the
personal conditioning unit, students demonstrated a moderate level of perceived TAS and
autonomous motivation, as represented by RAI. Meanwhile, teachers reported certain levels
of burnout. In accordance with SDT, significant correlations were found between students’
perceived TAS and their RAI at both T1 and T2. In the teacher level, there was a moderate
correlation between teachers’ emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. However,
reduced personal accomplishment was not correlated with other burnout dimensions.

Teachers’ burnout and students’ perceived TAS

To examine the extent to which teachers’ burnout could predict students’ perceived TAS,
we analysed T2 TAS as a function of both higher order (level 2) clustering variables of
teachers’ burnout and individual-level (level 1) variables (Model 1). The level 1 equation,
which represents the within-class variance in the outcome, was
526 Bo Shen et al.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations among variables

Variables M/SD Range 2 3 4 5 6 7

Students (N = 1,302)
1. TAS (T1) 4.45/1.56 1–7 .47** .31** .21**
2. TAS (T2) 4.34/1.52 1–7 – .20** .37**
3. RAI (T1) 4.03/5.28
14 to 17 – .45**
4. RAI (T2) 3.51/4.78
12 to 18 –
Teachers (N = 33)
5. Emotional exhaustion 3.02/1.32 0–6 – .45** .15
6. Depersonalization 2.28/0.99 0–6 – .08
7. RPA 2.88/1.13 0–6 –

Note. RAI = relative autonomy index; RPA = reduced personal accomplishment; TAS = teacher
autonomy support.
**p < .01.

Yij ¼ b0j þ b1j ðindividual T1 TASÞ þ b2j ðGenderÞ þ b3j ðAgeÞ þ rij ;

where Yij represents T2 TAS during class i for student j; b0j represents the mean of T2 TAS
across the class i; b1j, b2j, and b3j are random coefficients representing the relationships
between T2 TAS and T1 TAS, gender, and age for student j (across the class i); and rij
represents the error associated with each observation (i.e., level 1 error variance). The
level 2 equation, modelling between-class differences, was

b0j ¼ c00 þ c01 ðemotional exhaustionÞ þ c02 ðdepersonalizationÞ

þ c03 ðreduced accomplishmentÞ þ c04 ðaggregated mean of T1 TASÞ þ l0j

b1j ¼ c10 þ c11 ðemotional exhaustionÞ þ c12 ðdepersonalizationÞ

þ c13 ðreduced accomplishmentÞ þ c14 ðaggregated mean of T1 TASÞ þ l1j

b2j ¼ c20

b3j ¼ c30

where c01, c02, c03, and c04 were grand mean centred and represented the average
relationships between the burnout components (i.e., emotional exhaustion, deperson-
alization, and reduced personal accomplishment) and aggregated mean of T1 TAS and T2
TAS; c11, c12, c13, and c14 represented the average relationships of the burnout
components and aggregated mean of T1 TAS to the effect of individual T1 TAS on
individual T2 TAS; and l0j and l1j represented the residual variance in b0j and b1j,
respectively, for each student j conditioning on the model.
Results are shown in Table 2. The intercept of the slope coefficient for T1 TAS was
positive and statistically significant, indicating early TAS at T1 was related to later TAS at
T2. The variance (R2) explained by the level 1 predictor variables was .187, indicating that
students’ background characteristics explained 18.7% of the variance in T2 TAS at the
within-class level. At the between-class level, there was a statistically significant negative
 Burnout and autonomous motivation 527

Table 2. Multilevel models for prediction of students’ perceived teacher autonomy support (TAS) at T2

Model 1

Variable Coefficient SE b Variance

Fixed effects
c00 Intercept 4.36 .13
c01 Emotional exhaustion
.147** .034
.20
c02 Depersonalization
.031 .098
.03
c03 Reduced personal accomplishment .028 .115 .01
c04 T1 TAS (mean) .157** .024 .30
c10 T1 TAS (student) .164** .013 .42
c20 Gender: male
.09 .08 .03
c30 Age
.07* .03 .10
Random effects
Between-class mean, l0j .11**
Within-class effect, rij 1.09

Note. Subscript j = students; subscript i = classes.

Values in the tables are unstandardized.
*p < .05; **p < .01.

regression coefficient relationship between teachers’ emotional exhaustion and T2 TAS.

Also, a positive regression coefficient relationship was found between aggregated mean of
T1 TAS and individual T2 TAS. The explained variance (R2) in the outcome variable, by the
level 2 predictor variables was .131.

Teachers’ burnout and students’ autonomous motivation

With the significant predictive role of teachers’ burnout for students’ perceived TAS, we
further examined the extent to which teacher burnout predicted T2 autonomous
motivation. We tested Model 2 with T1 students’ individual perceived TAS, T1 students’
autonomous motivation, age and gender as level 1 predictors.
Results are shown in Table 3. The intercept of the slope coefficient, c10, which
represents the effect of T1 RAI, was significantly related to T2 RAI. Similarly, the intercept
of the slope coefficient, c40, which represents the effect of T1 TAS, was also related to T2
RAI. The overall variance (R2) explained by the level 1 predictor variables was .251,
suggesting that students’ background characteristics explained 25.1% of the variance in
T2 RAI at the within-class level. At the between-class level, a negative regression
coefficient relationship was found between teachers’ depersonalization and T2 RAI.
There was a positive regression coefficient relationship between aggregated mean of T1
TAS and T2 RAI. The explained variance (R2) in T2 RAI, by the level 2 predictor variables
was .075.

Discussion
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between teachers’ burnout
and students’ autonomous motivation. The multilevel analyses demonstrated that
teachers’ burnout was negatively associated with students’ autonomous motivation. It
is supported that teachers’ burnout is an important environmental factor explaining
528 Bo Shen et al.

Table 3. Multilevel models for prediction of students’ autonomous motivation (RAI at T2)

Model 1

Variable Coefficient SE b Variance

Fixed effects
c00 Intercept 4.12 0.04
c01 Emotional exhaustion
.109 .095
.08
c02 Depersonalization
.101** .022
.18
c03 Reduced personal accomplishment
.016 .014 .04
c04 T1 TAS (mean) .111** .023 .20
c10 T1 RAI .143** .014 .45
c20 Gender: male
.011 .013 .03
c30 Age
.08* .03 .10
c40 T1 TAS (student) .128** .025 .21
Random effects
Between-class mean, l0j .09**
Within-class effect, rij 1.07

Note. Subscript j = students; subscript i = classes; RAI = relative autonomy index; TAS = teacher
autonomy support.
Values in the tables are unstandardized.
*p < .05; **p < .01.

changes in students’ motivation in physical education. To our knowledge, this is the first
study using multilevel analyses to examine the relationships between teachers’ burnout
and students’ motivation. The hierarchical design of the data helped identify both
contextual and individual characteristics that contributed towards students’ autonomous
motivation.
We first examined the relation between teacher’s burnout and students’ perceived
TAS. Findings revealed that teachers’ emotional exhaustion negatively predicted the
perceived autonomy support at the end of the physical education programme. This
relation held even when the variance attributable to their initial correspondent score was
controlled. It is suggested that teachers’ emotional exhaustion not only predicted the final
perceived TAS but also directly contributed to perceived TAS adjustment. Under the
classes taught by teachers with high feelings of emotional exhaustion, students were less
likely to perceive their teacher’s autonomy support. By contrast, teachers with low levels
of emotional exhaustion facilitated students’ feelings of autonomy support and were more
favourable for all students.
The negative connection might be attributed to two possible teacher-to-student
processes. First, Pine (1993) reported that teachers’ feeling of burnout would diminish
their sense of significance in teaching. As the central quality of burnout (Maslach et al.,
2001), emotional exhaustion might have discouraged teachers from understanding the
merits of the tasks they taught and of the methods they used, and teachers might have been
impatient to provide their students with convincing explanations and examples for the
value and relevance of physical education and for their methods of teaching. Such
emotionally overextended and exhausted conditions might have interrupted teachers
with providing choice for their students. The second process by which teachers’
emotional exhaustion led to low autonomy-supportive teaching involves teachers’
personal and experience-based understanding of autonomous motivation and its benefits.
 Burnout and autonomous motivation 529

Roth et al. (2007) suggested that teachers who feel drained and exhausted have low
autonomous motivation for teaching. It is likely that emotionally exhausted teachers use
their own motivational experiences as a basis for inferring learning. They might be
reluctant to clarify the relevance of tasks to students’ goals and allow students to choose
learning activities they find interesting.
With the connection between teachers’ burnout and students’ perceived TAS, we
further examined the independent and unique variance of teacher burnout in the
explanation of student autonomous motivation, even when controlling for students’
original motivation and perceived TAS. Results demonstrated that perceived TAS
positively predicted students’ autonomous motivation at the end of the physical
education unit. However, there was a direct connection between teacher
depersonalization and students’ autonomous motivation. The significant nega-
tive regression coefficient suggests that, although attenuated by students’ original
autonomous motivation and perceived TAS, teachers’ lack of feeling and impersonal
response could damage students’ autonomous motivation development. Combining
the result that teachers’ burnout negatively predicted students’ perceived autonomy
support, we argued that the effect of teachers’ burnout with students’
autonomous motivation was partially mediated by perceived TAS. It is likely that
teachers’ burnout jeopardized students’ autonomous motivation both directly and
indirectly.
In education, McCarthy et al. (2006) stated that depersonalization is the teachers’
attempt to put distance between themselves and students by actively ignoring the
qualities that make students unique and engaging. Cognitive distance and the
development of indifference or cynical attitudes are the most evident sign of
depersonalization. The result supports the social contagion between teachers and
students in education. Hassin, Aarts, and Ferguson (2005) reported that people strive to
understand why people act, especially when it comes to significant others. It is
reasonable to postulate that the students were active agents scanning their class
environment, spontaneously extracting cues from class context (e.g., instruction style,
teacher feedbacks) to develop inferences about teachers’ emotional and psychological
states. These expectancies of their teachers’ psychological state (e.g., cognitive
distance, discouragement) were internalized to damage the development of autono-
mous motivation.
It is worthwhile to note that the magnitude of the relations between teachers’ burnout
and students’ variables were small or modest at best. We expected this result because there
was no shared method variance between teachers’ and students’ self-reports, and both
teachers and students were not asked to report on the same phenomena. Given the fact that
many contextual and personal factors could influence students’ motivation status, we
believe that the associations obtained are not trivial. They provided meaningful evidence to
support the underlying connection between teachers’ burnout and students’ motivation.
Noticeably, the predictive role of reduced personal accomplishment (inefficacy) for
students’ autonomous motivation was not found. Maslach et al. (2001) stressed that
reduced personal accomplishment might be a function of either exhaustion or
cynicism, or a combination of the 2. Because of different origins, the three dimensions
of burnout might play different roles in the transition from teachers to students. Also,
we suspected that students were more sensitive to understanding their teachers’
emotional and teaching attitudes (such as voice tones and other communication cues)
than their teachers’ feelings of reduced personal accomplishment. They might interpret
teachers’ depersonalization and emotional exhaustion more accurately, and therefore
530 Bo Shen et al.

potentially were more affected by them. Further research is needed to confirm this
speculation.
There are several limitations in this study. First, this study was correlational in nature.
Because there was no control group, we cannot draw the causal inference that the changes
we witnessed were exclusively the result of the instructional intervention. Second, this
study was conducted in a major Midwest metropolitan area in the United States. It is
important to consider the characteristics of the teachers and students in the research sites
before readers generalize the conclusions to any other school settings. Third, we collected
the first wave data in the beginning of the semester. It was likely that the students had
minimal experience with teachers’ instructional behaviour at that time. In future research,
collecting data in multiple points is suggested to better reflect students’ perception
change. Finally, because there is important variability across classrooms, teachers, and
students in terms of the negative effects of burnout, future research should examine
teachers’ burnout and its influence on learning in a more holistic way and compare the
differences between physical education teachers and other school subject teachers.

Conclusion
As one of the few studies that have explored the direct link between teacher burnout and
student autonomous motivation, this study enriched our understanding of teachers’
burnout and its relationship with students’ motivation. It confirms an important issue in
education: teacher burnout will lead to the undermining of student motivation. The three
dimensions of teachers’ burnout are somewhat interrelated, but each might play a
different role in the relation to undermining students’ motivation development. It is likely
that teachers can influence students’ motivation in education not only through
instructional styles but also through their own outward emotions and motivation.
Student inferences about their teachers’ feelings about instruction signify an important
but understudied source of influence on student motivation. Findings from this study
provide evidence to support existing teacher burnout literature and may help transfer this
line of inquiry into effective education programmes.
In the light of these findings, it is clear that teachers’ burnout can damage their motives
for engaging in instruction (Maslach & Leiter, 1999). To prevent teachers’ burnout, it is
important to improve teachers’ working conditions and classroom environments. Also,
there is a need for school systems to offer comprehensive workshops addressing stress
and time management, relaxation training, and coping skills to strengthen teachers’
resources for resisting burnout (Carson et al., 2011).

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Received 13 January 2015; revised version received 20 June 2015