Malleable Factors that Contribute to Teachers’ Stress, Burnout, Job Satisfaction, and Job Attrition in Special Education

The emotionally and physically taxing demands unique to the special education profession have been found to contribute to increased stress levels, thereby increasing the potential for teachers to experience burnout and job dissatisfaction. Namely, administrative tasks (increased paperwork and caseloads), lack of support and resources (inadequate teaching materials, lack of planning time, lack of administrative, parent, and peer teacher support), feelings of being under-prepared for the job, challenging behaviors exhibited by students, and inadequate reward for the efforts put in (low salary, lack of student progress), are a few factors that previous studies have linked to an increase in stress and burnout among special educators. Prolonged exposure to these factors may contribute towards teachers’ ultimate decision to leave the field of special education. Although previous systematic reviews have synthesized research on special education teacher attrition (Billinsley & Bettini, 2019; Billingsley, 2004; Brownell & Smith, 1992), and predictors of teacher stress and burnout (Brunsting et al., 2014; Fore et al., 2002; Wisniewski & Gargiulo, 1997), no systematic literature synthesis to date has specifically focused on malleable factors (i.e., factors that potentially can be changed or altered, unlike other variables such as teacher or student characteristics) and their relation to special educators’ stress, burnout, job satisfaction and job attrition. This literature synthesis aimed to address this research gap by systematically synthesizing existing studies that explored alterable factors such as work load, administrative support, self-efficacy, and job conflict and autonomy, and their correlation with teacher stress, job satisfaction, burnout, and attrition in special education.