Self-efficacy in classroom management, classroom disturbances, and emotional exhaustion: A moderated mediation analysis of teacher candidates

While the roles of student misbehavior and teacher self-efficacy in teacher burnout have been investigated, there is still a pressing need to determine the processes involved and the degree to which these generalize across early career teachers. The present research integrates findings on teacher self-efficacy, occupational stressors, and emotional exhaustion. A moderated mediation model is hypothesized where self-efficacy in classroom management predicts emotional exhaustion via classroom disturbances, but the strength of this whole mediation process is moderated by teachers' level of self-efficacy in classroom management. A sample of 1,227 German teacher candidates was used to test this hypothesis in 2 complementary studies. Study 1, based on the whole sample, utilized latent modeling and latent interactions, while Study 2 was based on a random longitudinal subsample of Study 1. The results generally supported our assumptions; the proposed moderated mediation model proved to be statistically significant, even when introducing background covariates into the model to control for pre-existing differences. Thus, self-efficacy in classroom management predicted emotional exhaustion via classroom disturbances only when self-efficacy in classroom management was low. Implications for teacher preservice training, based on the results, are discussed.