Exploring Pathways to Teacher Mental Health: A Mixed Methods Narrative Review of Job Demands, Job Resources, Professional Development, and Mediating Mechanisms in Multigrade Schools
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7719/irj.v26i1.994Keywords:
Education, teacher mental health, job demands, job resources, self-efficacy, multigrade schools, mixed-methodsDisciplines:
Teacher Education, Educational PsychologyAbstract
Teacher mental health is a global concern shaped by workload, emotional labour, and time pressure. Guided by the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework, this review synthesizes evidence published between 2020 and 2025 across diverse contexts. A narrative synthesis integrated quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies addressing job demands, job resources, occupational stress, teacher self-efficacy (TSE), and professional development (PD). Elevated demands—including administrative overload, role conflict, and multigrade complexity—consistently predict stress and burnout. Conversely, resources such as supportive leadership, collegiality, autonomy, and adequate materials enhance well-being and buffer strain. PD adequacy strengthens TSE, which mediates positive mental health outcomes and improves resilience. Findings highlight that dual-channel strategies—reducing avoidable demands while strengthening resource conditions—outperform isolated resilience initiatives. System-level supports, including protected planning time, collaborative structures, and job-embedded PD, are particularly critical in multigrade schools where stacked demands intensify stress. Comparative analysis underscores regional relevance: ASEAN-based studies reveal how workload and self-efficacy directly affect well-being in resource-constrained schools, while collegial support and resilience strategies buffer adverse effects. These findings complement Western evidence and emphasize the need for localized interventions. Overall, teacher mental health emerges from the dynamic interplay of structural conditions and psychological mechanisms. Sustainable improvements require coordinated interventions that reduce unnecessary demands, cultivate resource-rich environments, and strengthen self-efficacy. By integrating global and regional perspectives, this review advances theoretical understanding of JD-R pathways while offering practical recommendations for policy and practice, particularly in low-resource and multigrade settings.
References
Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2017). Job demands–resources theory: taking stock and looking forward. Journal of occupational health psychology, 22(3), 273. https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000056
Bao, C., Zhang, L. J., & Dixon, H. R. (2021). Teacher engagement in language teaching: Investigating self-Efficacy for teaching based on the project “Sino-Greece online Chinese language classrooms”. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 710736.
Capone, V., & Petrillo, G. (2020). Mental health in teachers: Relationships with job satisfaction, efficacy beliefs, burnout and depression. Current Psychology, 39(5), 1757-1766. DOI:10.1007/S12144-018-9878-7
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Agnes M. Cuerdo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Open Access. This article, published by JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). You are free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material). Under the following terms, you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
