In recent years, research has indicated that work pressure on school leaders has increased significantly (ETUCE, 2012; OECD, 2014). As a result of this evolution, the well-being of school leaders is strongly threatened (AGODI, 2016; Bourdeaud’hui & Vanderhaeghe, 2017; Walker, 2019). On top of that the COVID-pandemic has confronted school leaders with a period of exceptional crisis (Beauchamp, Hulme, Clarke, Hamilton, & Harvey, 2021). It is important to understand how school leaders deal with such unexpected crises, given their central role for the quality of education (Barber, Whelan, & Clark, 2013).  Therefore, this study will explore the influence of the COVID-pandemic on burnout feelings of school leaders in Flemish primary education (Belgium).  

Burnout is generally regarded as a multidimensional concept with exhaustion as central characteristic (Schaufeli, 2018). Exhaustion refers to the inability to perform and manifests itself in lack of energy. Close to exhaustion is mental distance, which refers to the unwillingness to perform and is manifested in increased resistance, reduced commitment and lack of interest. In addition, cognitive and emotional impairment can be considered as particular aspects of exhaustion because one’s energy is lacking for effectively regulating cognitive and emotional processes (Schaufeli, De Witte, & Desart, 2020). Thus, burnout is constituted by the following four dimensions: exhaustion, cognitive impairment, emotional impairment and mental distance. In addition to these four core symptoms, burnout also includes psychological distress and psychosomatic complaints. In studying burnout it is interesting to analyze the different dimensions of burnout and its relations with environmental and personal antecedents. Burnout has become a social and scientific issue that has been the focus of much attention for almost four decades. It seems that our work has become more and more stressful, as a result of which a growing number of individuals feel exhausted and drop out of work due to illness or disability (Schaufeli, 2018). In addition, the corona pandemic led to a very unexpected radical change that created a tremendous amount of stress. For school leaders, this crisis resulted in unclear school measures by the central government, the organization of preventive measures, online teaching etc.

The well-established JD-R model (Demerouti, Nachreiner, Bakker, & Schaufeli, 2001) assumes that work characteristics, such as job demands and job resources, have either positive or negative effects on employee well-being. However, Le Fevre, Kolt and Matheny (2006) conclude in their review study that the extent to which job demands lead to stress cannot be viewed separately from the perceptual or interpretive act by the individual. In other words, job demands are not necessarily stressful, but stress is the result of an interaction between individual and environmental elements (Howard, 2008). This idea can also be found in the JD-R model. Individual differences have been drawn into the model in the form of personal resources (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014; Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2007). Self-efficacy is considered to be one of the most important personal resources (Joseph, Jin, Newman, & O’Boyle, 2015; Parker, Williams, & Turner, 2006). Self-efficacy refers to individuals’ perceptions of their ability to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce a given attainment (Bandura, 1997).

In this study, first we want to analyze if the COVID-pandemic caused more stress and burnout among school principals. Second, we aim to analyze if the self-efficacy of school principals plays a mediating role in the impact that the COVID-19 crisis had on their stress level. It is important to understand if personal characteristics of school principals plays a mitigating role in coping with extreme conditions of crisis. This finding can have important consequences for the selection, preparation and training of school principals.

Data collection: All principals of primary schools in the region of Flanders (Belgium) were invited to participate in a largescale study. The principals received a link to an online questionnaire about their self-efficacy, burnout complaints and about the impact of COVID-pandemic. The online platform LimeSurvey was used. Informed consent was obtained. A total of 981 principals completed the questionnaire. Research instruments: The impact of corona. We aimed at designing a new instrument measuring the impact of the corona-pandemic on Flemish principals, the COVID-19 scale. Therefore, we formulated 9 items. Respondents were asked to rate the items on a five-point Likert-scale. Self-efficacy. To assess self-efficacy, we used the General Self-Efficacy scale of Chen, Gully, & Eden (2001). This self-report scale consists of 8 items about a person’s general self-efficacy. Burn-out. We used the Burnout Assesment Tool (BAT) by Schaufeli, De Witte and Desart (2020) to assess burnout complaints. The BAT includes 5 subscales, four core symptoms tapped by four scales each: 1. Exhaustion, 2. Mental distance, 3. Cognitive impairment, and 4. Emotional impairment that can be interpreted separately or together as a composite score. The fifth subscale refers to secondary symptoms consisting of two components (pschological distress and psychosomatic complaints) that are added together and interpreted as a whole (secondary distress symptoms). Data analysis: First, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis were used to study the structure of the developed questionnaire on the impact of the COVID-pandemic. We used maximum-likelihood extraction with promax rotation. The analysis indicated that there was one factor on which the items load. Items were removed when their factor loadings were lower than 0.30, as these are considered poor loadings (Fidell & Tabachnick, 2007). Three items were removed. We conducted reliability analyses which showed a Cronbach’s alpha value of .78. Second, data were analyzed by using the Baron and Kenny (1986) method for testing the conditions for mediation. The following conditions for mediation were tested through three regressions: 1. the independent variable predicts the dependent variable, 2. the independent variable predicts the mediator and 3. the independent variable and mediator predict the dependent variable. This process was repeated for the different burnout subscales. Full mediation is present when the independent variable no longer influences the dependent variable after the mediator has been controlled for. Partial mediation occurs when the independent variable’s influence on the dependent variable is reduced after the mediator is controlled for.

It was found that de COVID-19 pandemic caused more feelings of burnout among Flemish school principals. The unclear communication of the central government on mandatory school measures (online lessons, school closure, social distancing, use of face masks…), the lack of consultation of principals by the central government and the lack of a clear consistent policy were important elements in this stress increase. Governments can not be ready for all unexpected crises, but they should have a plan to support principals to deal with unforeseen events such as the COVID pandemic. In addition, self-efficacy mediated the relationship between the COVID-19 scale and four subscales of burnout: exhaustion, mental distance, emotional impairment, and cognitive impairment. Consequently, self-efficacy is an important factor in unexpected crisis situations. Coping with drastic changes is in part dependent on personal characteristics of the principals, such as self-efficacy. This means that self-efficacy should be an important point of attention in the selection, development and training of principals. School boards and districts need to include self-efficacy in their policy to hire and to support school administrators.

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