Special education teachers’ emotional labor strategies and its relationship with job burnout in China: The moderating role of psychological capital

Background: Educators are often viewed as emotional laborers who must be attuned to the emotional challenges of their profession and adept at managing their feelings, while a few studies that pay attention on the emotional labor strategies for special education teachers in China. Objective: The study aimed to understand the current situation of emotional labor strategies of special education teachers in China, to examine the relationship between different emotional labor strategies and job burnout, as well as the moderating effect of psychological capital. Methods: We applied Emotional Labor strategies, Job-burnout, and Psychological Capital to investigate 349 special education teachers teaching students with developmental disabilities. Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to explore the moderating role of psychological capital in the relationship between special education teachers’ emotional labor strategies and job burnout. Results: We found the three emotional labor strategies applied by special education teachers were natural acting, deep acting and surface acting from high to low. The emotional labor strategies of special education teachers were negatively correlated with their job burnout. Besides, psychological capital played a moderating role in the relationship of teachers’ deep acting and job burnout, and the association of teachers’ nature acting and job burnout. Conclusions: Special education teachers would use emotional labor strategies to deal with complex emotional events in their work, and it's related to their burnout. Strengthening psychological capital training for special education teachers is an important strategy to reducing their job-burnout as well.