Self‐Efficacy in Eliciting Social Support and Burnout Among Secondary‐School Teachers

A nonrecursive model with relationships between perceived lack of social support, perceived self‐efficacy in eliciting support at the workplace, and the 3 successive burnout dimensions–emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment–was tested in a sample of 277 secondary‐school teachers in The Netherlands. Results showed that teachers' perceived lack of support from colleagues and principals had a significant effect on their self‐efficacy beliefs in eliciting support from them, while these self‐efficacy beliefs were shown to predict their level of burnout. The hypothesized feedback loop was also confirmed: Teachers' level of burnout predicted the extent to which they feel lack of support. An additional effect of the personal‐accomplishment dimension of burnout on perceived self‐efficacy was suggested. It was concluded that perceived self‐efficacy in eliciting support at the workplace is a usable construct in the prediction of teacher burnout. Future directions in research are suggested.