Modeling the Structural Relationships of Job Stressors and Teachers' Autonomy Support with the Mediation of Emotional Exhaustion

The purpose of the present study was to model the structural relationships of job stressors and teachers' autonomy support with mediation of emotional exhaustion. This research was descriptive of the correlation type by the method of structural equations. The statistical population included all the teachers of first and second grade of secondary schools in Noor’s and Chamestan’s public schools in the academic year of 2019-2020, that based on Cochran’s formula and stratified random sampling method, 240 people were selected. The tools of this research were the job stressor factors questionnaire of Otero-Lopez et al. (2006), the teacher as social context questionnaire Welborn et al. (1992) and the teachers’ burnout inventory of Maslach et al. (1996). All analyzes were done by structural equation modeling method. The findings indicated that the structural relationship model of job stressors and teachers' autonomy support with the mediation of emotional exhaustion in teachers of first and second grade of secondary schools has favorable fit and significance. In this research, all the direct and indirect paths that lead to the prediction of teachers' autonomy support have been significant. The research’s results indicate that job stressors have a direct and indirect effect, through emotional exhaustion, on teachers' autonomy support and also emotional exhaustion directly affects autonomy support. Addressing these variables can be effective in solving the problems of teachers' autonomy support and increasing it.