The relationship between teacher’s sleep, burnout and student evaluation

Abstract

Objective: Students’ performance in school is greatly related to their teachers’ ability to facilitate learning. However, school teachers are increasingly reporting high levels of occupational burnout and suffering from chronic sleep deprivation, conditions that are likely to decrease their work performance. This research aims to find out whether sleep is indeed related to work performance through the feedback of their students. Method: Teachers and students from two local Secondary Schools in Hong Kong were invited to participate in a two-week diary study. A total of 17 teachers and 476students participated. Teachers were asked to record their sleep quality, sleep duration, perceived stress, and self-rated performance every day. Students were asked to evaluate the teachers’ teaching performance after their corresponding classes every day during the 2-weekperiod. Results: Participating teachers reported shorter sleep duration during weekdays compared to weekends. Consistent with previous research, the results showed that teachers with longer sleep duration reported lower perceived stress level of the day. Teachers’ poorer sleep and higher burnout level were predicting their teaching performance in their own perspective. However, students’ evaluation of teachers’ teaching performance was not associated with teachers’ burnout, sleep or stress level. Conclusion: In conclusion, the current findings indicated that teachers were sleep deprived during working days. Their sleep influenced their threshold for subjective stress. The current findings supported the importance of teachers’ sleep on their perceived stress level. Promoting longer and better sleep might be able to reduce their subjective stress and also improve their teaching performance. Although no association was found between teachers’ sleep and students’ satisfaction with their teaching, we could not rule out the importance of teachers’ sleep in maintaining an effective learning environment for students. More objective measures on the teachers’ teaching performance were recommended in future studies.