The job and life satisfaction of teachers: a social cognitive model integrating teachers’ burnout, self-efficacy, dispositional optimism, and social support

The purpose of the study was to test a model of factors predicting teachers’ job and life satisfaction, burnout, dispositional optimism, social support, perceived workload, and self-efficacy. The model extends Lent and Brown’s (J Voc Behav 69(2):236–247, 10.1016/j.jvb.2006.02.006, 2006; J Career Assess 16(1):6–21, 10.1177/1069072707305769, 2008) social cognitive model of the interaction of sources of job and life satisfaction. Specifically, burnout, a condition with a high incidence rate among teachers, was included. The participants were 676 Swiss teachers. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results revealed the differential effect of the variables considered on teachers' burnout and job satisfaction, as well as their life satisfaction. Dispositional optimism, social support, and perceived workload might reduce the risk of teacher burnout; dispositional optimism, social support, and teacher self-efficacy seem to positively affect job satisfaction; and dispositional optimism alone, together with burnout and job satisfaction, directly relates to teachers’ life satisfaction. Practical implications of these results are discussed.

Effects of trust, risk perception, and health behavior on COVID-19 disease burden: Evidence from a multi-state US survey

Early public health strategies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the United States relied on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) as vaccines and therapeutic treatments were not yet available. Implementation of NPIs, primarily social distancing and mask wearing, varied widely between communities within the US due to variable government mandates, as well as differences in attitudes and opinions. To understand the interplay of trust, risk perception, behavioral intention, and disease burden, we developed a survey instrument to study attitudes concerning COVID-19 and pandemic behavioral change in three states: Idaho, Texas, and Vermont. We designed our survey (n = 1034) to detect whether these relationships were significantly different in rural populations. The best fitting structural equation models show that trust indirectly affects protective pandemic behaviors via health and economic risk perception. We explore two different variations of this social cognitive model: the first assumes behavioral intention affects future disease burden while the second assumes that observed disease burden affects behavioral intention. In our models we include several exogenous variables to control for demographic and geographic effects. Notably, political ideology is the only exogenous variable which significantly affects all aspects of the social cognitive model (trust, risk perception, and behavioral intention). While there is a direct negative effect associated with rurality on disease burden, likely due to the protective effect of low population density in the early pandemic waves, we found a marginally significant, positive, indirect effect of rurality on disease burden via decreased trust (p = 0.095). This trust deficit creates additional vulnerabilities to COVID-19 in rural communities which also have reduced healthcare capacity. Increasing trust by methods such as in-group messaging could potentially remove some of the disparities inferred by our models and increase NPI effectiveness.

In Search for the Adaptive Self: A Model of Adaptive Self-Concept

The main aim of this article is to present a descriptive social-cognitive model of the adaptive self-concept (ASC) which integrates knowledge concerning the relationship between two aspects of the self—self-awareness and self-knowledge—and optimal functioning. We propose that adaptive self-awareness is moderately frequent, non-ruminative, focused on inner states, and motivated by curiosity. Adaptive self-knowledge is defined as accurate, complex, integrated and consisting of easily accessible self-beliefs, both abstract and concrete. The broader context for the ASC model is discussed, including its regulatory and interpersonal functions and factors which influence ASC development. The limitations of the model are discussed and suggestions are made for future investigations.