Article

European Physical Education Review

2019, Vol. 25(1) 236–253
Emotional labor, teacher ª The Author(s) 2017
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burnout, and turnover sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1356336X17719559
journals.sagepub.com/home/epe
intention in high-school
physical education teaching
Ye Hoon Lee
Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, University of North Alabama, Florence, AL,
USA

Abstract
Grounded upon the conservation of resources theory, this study sought to examine the rela-
tionships between the three emotional labor strategies, teacher burnout, and turnover intention
among physical education teachers. A total of 613 high-school physical education teachers from
47 states across the United States completed online questionnaires that measured the
proposed variables. The goodness-of-fit statistics indicated that the structural model showed a
reasonable fit,
2
(605) ¼ 1391.26 ¼ 2.30, p < 0.01; RMSEA ¼ .05; TLI ¼ .93; CFI ¼ .93. The results also
revealed
that teacher burnout was positively associated with surface acting and negatively associated with
genuine expression. Further, teacher burnout was positively associated with turnover intention.
Mediation analysis showed that teacher burnout fully mediated the trajectory from emotional
labor strategies to turnover intention. The results highlight the impact of emotional labor on
physical education teachers’ well-being and intention to leave the teaching profession.

Keywords
Coping strategy, emotional demands, emotional regulation, surface acting, teacher retention

Introduction
Teaching is a well-known context for generating many emotional demands as it involves high
levels of face-to-face interaction with key stakeholders (e.g. students, colleagues, administrators,
and parents; Gu and Day, 2007). However, these emotional demands are associated with negative
consequences such as teacher burnout, job dissatisfaction, and decreased enthusiasm (see Kinman
et al., 2011; Kunter et al., 2011). Emotional labor, defined as teachers’ efforts to manage

Corresponding author:
Ye Hoon Lee, Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, University of North Alabama, Flowers Hall 403,
UNA Box 5073, Florence, AL 35632, USA.
Email: ylee6@una.edu
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unpleasant emotions and to express socially acceptable emotions (Isenbarger and Zembylas,
2006), is a recent psychological construct that addresses how workers can effectively deal with
such emotional incidents at work (Grandey and Gabriel, 2015). Upon encountering stressful
situations, teachers who purposefully produce and display situation-appropriate emotions without
revealing their true emotions are said to engage in emotional labor. Indeed, several education
researchers have addressed the importance of emotional labor in attaining teaching goals and
sending “we care” messages to students (Isenbarger and Zembylas, 2006). However, the side
effect of inten- tional emotional control is potential harm to individuals’ well-being (Mauss et
al., 2007). This implies that, while teachers strive to control their emotions for students’ benefit
(Shoval et al.,
2010), the process may gradually decrease their well-being and adversely affect job-related atti-
tudes, such as teacher burnout and turnover intention (Chau et al., 2009; Goodwin et al., 2011;
Grandey and Gabriel, 2015; Hu¨lsheger and Schewe, 2011).
Interest in emotional labor in the physical education (PE) setting is warranted (Stuhr et al.,
2012)
because the unique characteristics of the context (e.g. physical structure of the classroom setting,
occupational duties, the level of perceived social support, and the status of the teachers and the
subject) can potentially elicit highly emotionally challenging incidents (see Macdonald, 1995;
Spittle et al., 2015). Despite the findings showing the importance of emotional labor in other
domains, there is limited research on this topic in PE settings (Lee et al., 2016). Thus, to fill the
void, this study examined how the different emotional labor strategies influence teacher burnout,
which in turn influences the intention to quit teaching among PE teachers. More specifically,
grounded in the conservation of resources theory (COR; Hobfoll, 1989), the purpose of this study
was to investigate: (a) the relationships between the three emotional labor strategies and teacher
burnout; (b) the rela- tionships between teacher burnout and turnover intention; and (c) the
mediating role of teacher burnout in the relationship between emotional labor strategies and
turnover intention.

PE teaching context
Previous literature has noted that PE teachers differ from classroom teachers in terms of the
physical structure of the classroom, the characteristics of the teaching content, occupational
duties, and the status of the subject and the teachers (Koustelios and Tsigilis 2005; Tsigilis et al.,
2011). These differences can potentially elicit unique challenges and high levels of emotion
among PE teachers (Spittle et al., 2015). For example, PE classes usually take place in open
spaces such as gyms, tracks, and playgrounds. This allows students to consider PE classes as
places where they can release their surplus energy (Macdonald, 1995). However, as PE classes
potentially involve dangerous activities including contact sports and gymnastics (Spittle et al.,
2015), the environment can create more disciplinary incidents and safety concerns compared with
classroom settings and requires constant alertness by PE teachers (Shoval et al., 2010). As
student-related issues are one of the most significant factors generating teachers’ negative
emotions (Hancock and Scherff, 2010), these idiosyncratic features may place intense emotional
demands on PE teachers. In addition, PE classes are frequently “being watched” (p. 136) by other
school actors such as principals, other teachers, and parents, without adequate notification, as
well as by the public such as followers and spectators of sports competitions (Macdonald, 1995).
This is an additional factor that may impose emotional demands.
The wide variety of occupational duties inherent in PE teaching may increase the emotional
demands on teachers. It is true that all teachers are required to fulfill generic roles such as
teaching, managing, and mentoring students, paperwork, and administration (Richards, 2015).
However, PE
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teachers are frequently expected to engage in diverse roles of athletic coaches, sport competition
organizers, student–athlete counselors, and sports referees, which often results in excessive
workloads (O’Connor and Macdonald, 2002). These excessive work demands can cause a roller
coaster of intense emotions and stress (Liston et al., 2006).
Finally, although PE teachers perform a wide variety of duties, they are often deemed “low
status” (UNESCO, 2014) and “marginal” (Shoval et al., 2010) because key stakeholders tend to
attribute less importance to PE as a subject (Kougioumtzis et al., 2011). PE classes are canceled
readily and PE teachers tend to receive inadequate support from their school; subsequently, they
experience isolation and little professional adult interaction in the school context (Shoval et al.,
2010). As perceptions of marginalization and isolation often lead to job dissatisfaction and
impaired self-confidence, which in turn produce stress and anxiety (Reichenberg et al., 2000;
UNESCO, 2014), these latent unpleasant feelings need to be modified, making emotional labor a
necessity for PE teachers.

Literature review
Conceptual model development
As can be seen in Figure 1, the conceptual model that investigates the relationships between
emotional labor strategies, teacher burnout, and turnover intention was developed. Given that the
PE context contains several stressors (Spittle et al., 2015), understanding the role of emotional
labor as a coping strategy is warranted. Thus, this conceptual model sought to describe how dif-
ferent emotional labor strategies would affect teacher burnout and turnover intention differently.
This model particularly used the COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989) as a theoretical framework to
explain how emotional labor can influence teacher burnout.

Figure 1. Conceptual model for the relationships among three forms of emotional labor, the components of
teacher burnout, and turnover intention. The (þ) symbols represent hypothesized positive relationships and
the ( ) symbols represent hypothesized negative relationships. dotted lines represent insignificant relation-
ships between the variables.
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Conservation of resources theory

The tenets of COR theory are particularly relevant for the current conceptual model. COR
suggests that when workers encounter emotional demands in the course of their work, they use
their emotional resources in anticipation of reward (Brotheridge and Lee, 2002). When the future
return is perceived to be lower than the investment of their emotional resources, they perceive
this as a loss of resources and experience negative consequences. On the other hand, when the
rewards outweigh emotional resources used, there is a net gain in terms of returned resources,
and this enhances their eustress (beneficial stress) (Hobfoll, 1989). Mahoney et al. (2011) stated
that professionals would be motivated to replenish their resources, maximize their gains in
resources, and offset net losses by employing such strategies as replacement, coping, and
appraisal.
In emotional labor research, there have been a few empirical studies that used COR to explain
the relationship between emotional labor and individual outcomes. For example, Brotheridge and
Lee (2002) and Glomb and Tews (2004) examined whether COR can explain the underlying
mechanism of the relationship between emotional and job burnout among service employees.
More recently, Mahoney et al. (2011) examined emotional labor and its association with such
work outcomes as emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and affective commitment among
college professors. All these research studies used COR to explain the differences in expenditure
of resources and potential gains and losses between emotional labor strategies and their impact
on individual outcomes.
In the PE teaching context, PE teachers inevitably encounter emotionally challenging incidents
(e.g. student misconduct). As a coping process, teachers may engage in the emotional labor of
investing their emotional resources with the expectation of receiving positive outcomes (gains) in
return (Brotheridge and Lee, 2002). The positive outcomes can manifest as rewarding relation-
ships, positive interactions, monetary compensation, and self-efficacy (Brotheridge and Lee,
2002). However, the outcomes can be differentiated depending on which emotional labor strategy
they choose to adopt. For example, PE teachers experience negative outcomes either when the
strategy depletes their resources or when returned resources are not perceived as valuable com-
pared with expended emotional resources. On the other hand, they experience eustress when
rewards outweigh their investment of emotional resources, with a net gain of resources (see
Mahoney et al., 2011). Thus, the next section discusses the overall emotional labor construct and
different facets of emotional labor strategies to provide a comprehensive understanding of which
emotional labor strategies are beneficial and which are detrimental for their personal well-being.

General emotional labor construct

Grandey and Gabriel (2015) have proposed a conceptual framework for emotional labor to
illustrate its special nature. They considered emotional labor an “umbrella” for a blended
technique of emotional job requirements, internal emotional regulation, and emotional
performance.
Emotional job requirements are typically organizations’ rules about emotional display. For
example, flight attendants are often required to display positive emotions toward passengers
(Grandey, 2000) and teachers are generally expected to display warmth and compassion and
suppress anger towards pupils (Kinman et al., 2011). Internal emotional regulation consists of
surface acting, deep acting, and genuine expression (Diefendorff et al., 2005; Grandey and
Gabriel,
2015). Surface acting is the process of modifying one’s outer expression without altering interior
feelings (Grandey and Gabriel, 2015). PE teachers who suppress their anger toward students’
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disrespectful behaviors and fake outward displays of calmness exemplify surface acting. On the
other hand, deep acting is an attempt to transform feelings into the organizations’ emotional
requirements (Grandey and Gabriel, 2015). PE teachers who try to experience and express
empathy by thinking that students’ aggressive behaviors may result from their low self-esteem
exemplify deep acting. Genuine expression occurs when PE teachers experience appropriate
emotions and express them automatically (Diefendorff et al., 2005). PE teachers who naturally
feel excitement before class and express this emotion in front of students exemplify genuine
expression. It is important to note that genuine expression is a strategy wherein the expressed
emotions are con- gruent with the emotional requirements imposed by organizations (Diefendorff
et al., 2005). When workers express their true emotions regardless of the expected norms (e.g.
teachers’ spontaneous anger expressions toward pupils), they are said to engage in emotional
deviance (Dahling, 2016), which may harm their schools and their image as ideal teachers.
Finally, emotional performance refers to the individuals’ outward expressions that are visible to
recipients. Recipients may assess the others’ observable expressions as either fake or authentic,
which in turn can influence their impression and service evaluation (Grandey and Gabriel, 2015).

Teacher burnout
One of the most cited consequences of emotional labor is job burnout, defined as “an erosion of
engagement. What started out as important, meaningful, and challenging work becomes unplea-
sant, unfulfilling, and meaningless” (Maslach et al., 2001: 416). Maslach et al. (2001) identified
burnout’s components as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accom-
plishment. Emotional exhaustion reflects a lack of energy and feeling that one’s emotional
resources are used up by excessive emotional demands at work. Depersonalization is defined as
“an attempt to put distance between oneself and service recipients by actively ignoring the
qualities that make them unique and engaging people” (Maslach et al., 2001: 403). Finally,
reduced per- sonal accomplishment reflects a lowered feeling about one’s ability and
productivity at work.
A previous meta-analysis reported that the different facets of emotional labor consistently
affect job burnout in different ways. Job burnout was positively linked to surface acting, but not
to deep acting, and negatively linked to genuine expression (see a meta-analysis by Hu¨lsheger
and Schewe, 2011). For example, Chang (2013) reported that the emotional regulation strategy of
faking and suppressing true emotions (i.e. surface acting) had a positive association with teacher
burnout. Applying the tenets of COR theory to this result, Gross (2002: 289) stated that emotive
suppression that entails purposeful self-control “consumes cognitive resources during the emotion
regulation period” and leads to a loss of resources. Thus, those who constantly engage in
deliberate emotional labor, such as surface acting, exhaust their internal resources and become
burned out (Brotheridge and Lee, 2003).
However, previous findings about the relationship between deep acting and employee well-
being have been equivocal: research has found positive, negative, or no relationship (see
Hu¨lsheger and Schewe, 2011). In education, Chang failed to find a significant association
between the cognitive reappraisal strategy of emotional regulation (i.e. deep acting) and teacher
burnout. Furthermore, Lee et al. (2016) found that genuine expression was negatively associated
with emotional exhaustion among Korean PE teachers. Based on COR, Mahoney et al. (2011)
stated that, as genuine expression leads naturally to a congruence between felt and expressed
emotions, it barely generates psychological effort and consumes cognitive resources, which in
turn can gen- erate positive outcomes for individuals. Thus, this study hypothesized the
following:
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H1: Surface acting will be positively related to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization,

and reduced personal accomplishment.
H2: Genuine expression will be negatively related to emotional exhaustion, depersonaliza-
tion, and reduced personal accomplishment.

Turnover intention
Turnover intention, defined by MacInerney et al. (2015: 11) as “the intention to leave the orga-
nization one is working for or to quit one’s profession and move to a different career pathway” is
a major concern because of its detrimental effect on teaching effectiveness and educational insti-
tutions (Ronfeldt et al., 2013). For example, Gray and Taie (2015) reported that, among all
beginning teachers in the United States from 2007 to 2008, 17% left the profession during their
first
5 years. Moreover, the Alliance for Excellent Education (2014) reported that US$2.2 billion was
spent annually to recruit and train new teachers. PE has also suffered from a high teacher attrition
rate. For example, Evans and Williams (1989) found that the majority (80%) of male PE teachers
in the United Kingdom were thinking of quitting their profession. More recently, Ma¨kela¨ et al.
(2014a) found that 39% of Finnish PE teachers were considering leaving the teaching profession,
even though their profession is highly regarded in Finland, while Ma¨kela¨ and Whipp (2015)
reported that 40% of Australian PE teachers intended to leave the profession.
Studies have documented empirical evidence of significant relationships between the different
emotional labor strategies and turnover intention. Goodwin et al. (2011) reported that surface
acting had a direct positive relationship with employee turnover whereas deep acting had no such
relationship. Previous literature has consistently identified emotional dissonance, defined as the
mismatch between what a person feels and what s/he displays, as a primary precursor of turnover
intention (Grandey, 2000). Thus, emotional dissonance derived from surface acting may manifest
among PE teachers as a state of feeling uncomfortable about their work, which in turn influences
turnover intention (Goodwin et al., 2011).
However, there may be no bridge to connect deep acting and genuine expression to turnover
intention, as neither strategy creates emotional dissonance (Grandey, 2000). Thus, it is expected
that both deep acting and genuine expression may not have significant associations with turnover
intention. Accordingly, this study hypothesized the following:

H3: Surface acting will be positively related to turnover intention.

Mediating role of teacher burnout

Past studies have shown that job burnout is positively related to turnover intention in teaching
(Smith and Ingersoll, 2004; Spittle et al., 2015). Several studies have also found that burnout
significantly mediates the relationship between various job stressors and work withdrawal
behavior (Leiter and Maslach, 2009; Richards et al., 2016). Thus, surface acting, previously
regarded as a source of stress (Grandey and Gabriel, 2015), may act as a job stressor that
accentuates psychological depletion (teacher emotional exhaustion), causing counterproductive
work behavior in teachers, for example, turnover, absenteeism, and poor work quality (Goodwin
et al., 2011). Studies demonstrated that employees’ emotional exhaustion significantly mediated
the relationship between surface acting and turnover intention (see Chau et al., 2009). Further,
as no direct relationship between genuine
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expression (the independent variable) and turnover intention (the dependent variable) was
proposed in this study, teacher burnout (the mediating factor) may fully mediate the genuine
expression– turnover intention relationship. Therefore, this study hypothesized the following:

H4: Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment will be

positively related to turnover intention.
H5: Teacher burnout will partially mediate the relationship between surface acting and
turnover intention.
H6: Teacher burnout will fully mediate the relationship between genuine expression and
turnover intention.

Methods
Participants
The target population in this study was PE teachers who were currently working in public high
schools in the United States. According to National Center for Education Statistics (2013), there
were approximately 65,600 PE teachers in 2013 in the United States. Of those teachers, 63.5%
were male, 83.3% were Caucasian, and 43.5% had a master’s degree. The email addresses of
3000 randomly selected high-school PE teachers across the United States were obtained from a
com- mercial website (http://www.mchdata.com). However, 377 emails bounced back, which left
2623 teachers who were eligible to participate in the survey. Of these, 752 teachers completed
the questionnaires for a response rate of 28.7%. However, 139 incomplete responses were
excluded owing to their failure to answer several key survey items. Thus, 613 high-school PE
teachers from
47 states were included in the final analysis, for a final response rate of 23.4%.
Participants were 58.4% male and the mean age was 45.58 years (SD ¼ 10.76), ranging from
24 to 69 years old. The majority of participants had a master’s degree (66.9%) and were
Caucasian (86.0%). Nearly 40% of participants worked in rural areas (39.8%) and nearly 40% in
suburban areas (39.6%), whereas 20.4% of them worked in urban areas. Among 47 states, the
largest rep- resented state was California (9.7%), followed by New York and Illinois (7.7%), and
then Wis- consin (5.1%). Respondents averaged 5.55 hours (SD ¼ 5.07) of direct interaction
with students per day and 20.36 (SD ¼ 14.62) years’ teaching experience.

Procedures and instrumentation

Approval was obtained from the institution’s Human Subjects Research committees and pre-
notification emails were sent to all participants. One week later, an email was sent containing a
link to the online survey questionnaire, information about the study’s purpose, and forms for
informed consent. A post-notification email was sent one week later to encourage participation.
The online survey contained 48 items, including the Teacher Emotional Labour Strategy Scale
(TELSS; 11 items), the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES; 22 items), the
Turnover Intention Scale (TIS; four items), and demographic information (11 items).

Emotional labor strategies. The TELSS developed by Yin (2012) was used to assess the PE
teachers’ adoption of different emotional labor strategies. The questionnaire has five items for
the surface acting subscale, three for the deep acting subscale, and three for the genuine
expression subscale (see
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Appendix 1). Scores were recorded on a seven-point Likert scale from one (very strongly
disagree) to seven (very strongly agree). The scale had acceptable internal consistencies of .84
(surface acting),
.70 (deep acting), and .67 (genuine expression) among Chinese teachers in a previous study
(Yin,
2012) and was acceptable in the current study, with values of .81 (deep acting) and .91 (surface
acting), except for genuine expression (Cronbach’s a of .67), which is similar to Yin’s (2012)
study.

Teacher burnout. The MBI-ES was employed to assess PE teacher burnout (Maslach and Jackson,
1986). Teacher burnout is a second-order latent variable that consists of three dimensions of
burnout: emotional exhaustion (nine items), depersonalization (five items), and reduced personal
accomplishment (reverse-coded eight items). Respondents rated each item on a seven-point Likert
scale from 0 (never) to six (almost daily). The scale’s reliability was acceptable at .87 for emo-
tional exhaustion, .76 for depersonalization, and .91 for a reduced sense of personal accom-
plishment in previous research with American teachers (Chang, 2013) and showed good
reliability in the current study (Cronbach’s a ranged from .77 to .92).

Turnover intention. The four-item TIS (Becker and Billings, 1993) was employed to measure PE
teachers’ intention to quit (see Appendix 1). Each item was rated on a seven-point scale from one
(very strongly disagree) to seven (very strongly agree). MacInerney et al. (2015) reported an
acceptable alpha level of .87 for a sample of Hong Kong teachers and the current study also
showed a good reliability of .87.

Data analysis
A four-step analysis was conducted. First, key assumptions about the data were evaluated before
the statistical analysis. Specifically, the ratio of cases to observed variables was calculated (Kline,
2011) and missing data, outliers, normality, and linearity were checked (Tabachnick and Fidell
2013). After dealing with the key assumptions, descriptive statistics and the reliability of the
variables were computed using SPSS 21.0. Third, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was
utilized as a methodo- logical tool to test the psychometric properties of the instruments and
refine the model through examining the overall measurement model fit and how well individual
items defined their assigned latent factors. Specifically, convergent validity was tested though
factor loadings, composite relia- bility, and average variance extracted (AVE) scores (Teo et al.,
2009), while discriminant validity was examined by comparing the squared correlation between
the variable and associated variables and AVE values (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). Finally, the
structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to test all the hypotheses by assessing
the structural coefficients of the relationships. Maximum likelihood estimation was used to
evaluate the fit of the model. For relative chi-square, a value less than three represents acceptable
data-model fit (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013). For com- parative fit indices (CFI) and Tucker-
Lewis index (TLI), values higher than 0.90 represent an acceptable fit, and root mean square
error of approximation (RMSEA) and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) values
lower than 0.06 represent a close fit (Hu and Bentler, 1999).

Results
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, skewness, and kurtosis) and
cor- relations among the proposed variables. The results revealed that PE teachers used high
levels of
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Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations among study variables.

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. SA
2. DA .08*
3. GE –.47** .10**
4. EE .43** .00 –.32**
5. DP .41** –.04 –.34** .65**
6. RA .30** –.16** –.33** .35** .42**
7. TI .26** –.10* –.27** .58** .48** .43**
M 2.45 3.49 3.97 3.21 2.15 2.31 2.74
SD .89 .84 .60 1.31 1.10 1.25 1.25
Skewness .37 –.92 –.60 .47 1.25 .74 1.01
Kurtosis –.40 1.00 1.44 –.53 1.10 .13 .83

Note. N ¼ 613. SA: surface acting; DA: deep acting; GE: genuine expression; EE: emotional exhaustion; DP:
depersonalization; RA: reduced personal accomplishment; TI: turnover intention.
* p < .05; ** p < .01

genuine expression most (M ¼ 3.97; SD ¼ .89), followed by deep acting (M ¼ 3.49; SD ¼ .84),
and surface acting (M ¼ 2.45; SD ¼ .60). Means for teacher burnout show that participants scored
low (i.e. depersonalization) to medium (i.e. emotional exhaustion) on the three dimensions of
teacher burnout. In addition, the level of turnover intention among PE teachers was also low (M
¼ 2.74; SD ¼ 1.25).

Psychometric properties and measurement model

CFA results revealed that the measurement model that included all variables showed an
2
acceptable fit, / df ¼ 1317.74 / 603 ¼ 2.19 (p < 0.01); SRMR ¼ .04; RMSEA ¼ .04; TLI ¼
.93; CFI ¼ .94. As Table 2 shows, convergent validity was established by showing all factor
loadings were sig- nificant at the .001 level and all composite reliability ( c) values were higher
than .70. Finally, AVE values were higher than .50 except for the measures for genuine
expression, reduced personal accomplishment and depersonalization, which were slightly less
than .50. All the square-root values of AVE were higher than the corresponding correlations
between the variable and associated variables, establishing discriminant validity (Hair et al.,
2014).

Structural model analysis

SEM was conducted to test all the hypotheses in the theoretical model. The goodness-of-fit sta-
2
tistics indicated that the structural model showed a reasonable fit, / df ¼ 1391.26 / 605 ¼ 2.30
(p
< 0.01); SRMR ¼ .05; RMSEA ¼ .05; TLI ¼ .93; CFI ¼ .93. As shown in Figure 2, surface
acting was positively associated with emotional exhaustion (b ¼ .41; p < .01), depersonalization
(b ¼ .37; p < .01), and reduced personal accomplishment (b ¼ .21; p < .01), whereas genuine
expression was negatively associated with emotional exhaustion (b ¼ –.14; p < .05),
depersonalization (b ¼ –.19; p < .01), and reduced personal accomplishment (b ¼ –.30; p < .01).
Deep acting was not associated with emotional exhaustion (b ¼ –.04; p > .05) and
depersonalization (b ¼ –.06; p > .05), and negatively associated with reduced personal
accomplishment only (b ¼ –.17; p < .01). In addition, surface acting (b ¼ .10; p > .05), deep
acting (b ¼ .01; p > .05), and genuine expression (b ¼ –.02;
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Table 2. Factor loadings, composite reliability, and AVE for study variables.

Variable Item b c
AVE

SA SA 1 .85 .91 .68

SA 2 .87
SA 3 .84
SA 4 .80
SA 5 .74
DA DA 1 .67 .82 .61
DA 2 .87
DA 3 .78
GE GE 1 .45 .72 .47
GE 2 .81
GE 3 .74
EE EE 1 .81 .92 .55
EE 2 .77
EE 3 .82
EE 4 .65
EE 5 .86
EE 6 .80
EE 7 .64
EE 8 .59
EE 9 .71
DP DP 1 .39 .75 .41
DP 2 .83
DP 3 .89
DP 4 .49
DP 5 .40
RA RA 1* .38 .80 .34
RA 2* .41
RA 3* .68
RA 4* .66
RA 5* .52
RA 6* .68
RA 7* .73
RA 8* .48
TI TI 1 .85 .89 .67
TI 2 .93
TI 3 .70
TI 4 .77

Note. * indicates a reverse-coded item.

p > .05) were not associated with turnover intention. Finally, turnover intention was positively
associated with emotional exhaustion (b ¼ .41; p < .01), depersonalization (b ¼ .18; p < .01), and
reduced personal accomplishment (b ¼ .28; p < .01). The total standardized indirect effect
between surface acting and turnover intention was .29, p < .001 (95% bias-corrected confidence
interval: (.19, .40)), whereas the total standardized indirect effect between genuine expression and
turnover intention was –.17, p < .01 (95% bias-corrected confidence interval: (–.30, –.07)).
2

Figure 2. Final structural model. Values in parentheses represent the standardized indirect effects between emotional labor strategies and turnover
intention. *p < .05, **p < .01
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Discussion
The purposes of this study were to examine the relationships between the three emotional labor
strategies, teacher burnout, and turnover intention. This study also examined the mediating role of
teacher burnout in the relationships between emotional labor strategies and turnover intention.
Most studies on PE teachers’ turnover intention have focused on the influence of demographic
factors, organizational contexts, and employment options on turnover intention (Ma¨kela¨ et
al.,
2014b). This is the first study to examine how different emotional labor strategies influence
turnover intention through burnout, an important mediator among PE teachers, thus indicating
significant theoretical implications for PE literature.
The results showed that surface acting was positively associated with all the facets of teacher
burnout among PE teachers. Based on COR theory, surface acting, which requires high levels of
physiological effort, leads to a greater depletion of emotional resources, which in turn results in
negative outcomes such as job burnout (Mahoney et al., 2011). Furthermore, Mauss et al. (2007)
noted that deliberate emotional regulation produced an “ironic effect” (p. 699) of control; the
individual may become angrier as they focus on their anger during the regulation process. This
may be the mechanism for the negative impact of deliberate emotional regulation on PE teachers’
health. Therefore, we can conclude that surface acting is detrimental to PE teachers’ health,
indicated by the positive relationship with teacher burnout.
It is worth noting that marginalization and isolation leads PE teachers to spend most of their
time with students, which in turn increases the students’ influence on PE teachers (Schempp and
Graber, 1992). Because of such an influence, PE teachers may feel pressure to meet students’
needs and to manage their emotions by presenting an idealized image of their emotions to
students. Thus, it seems plausible to note that the unique characteristics of PE teaching (i.e.
marginalization and isolation) lead PE teachers to experience more pressure to manage their
emotions, which in turn leads them to engage in surface acting in their interactions with
students.
Second, this study found that deep acting had a negative association with the reduced personal
accomplishment dimension of teacher burnout only. The result indicates that when PE teachers
use deep acting, they will be more likely to experience a feeling of personal
accomplishment. According to Brotheridge and Lee (2002), deep acting could generate a feeling
of authenticity by aligning felt emotions with expressed emotions. In addition, it could result in
positive interactions between employees and clients because clients could also feel the
expressers’ authenticity. Thus, it would lead to feelings of personal accomplishment as a form of
self-evaluation through authen- ticity and positive feedback from clients (Brotheridge and Lee,
2002).
Genuine expression was found to be negatively associated with all the facets of teacher
burnout. Mauss et al. (2007) noted that automatic emotional regulation, which involved the
method of genuine expression, was effective and efficient because it typically required fewer
resources and does not deplete emotional resources compared with deliberate emotional
regulation. Furthermore, Mahoney et al. (2011) stated that as genuine expression resulted in
positive interactions between expressers and recipients, the strategy replenished emotional
resources and led to a net gain of resources and favorable outcomes. Hence, these underlying
mechanisms of genuine expression may lead PE teachers to experience eustress. Therefore, based
on COR, genuine expression, which requires a lesser investment of resources, will result in less
teacher burnout than other emotional coping strategies.
Finally, it was found that teacher burnout fully mediated the relationship between surface
acting and turnover intention. PE teachers who suppressed their negative emotions and faked
positive emotional displays were more likely to experience burnout, which elicited an intention to
leave the
 2L European Physical Education Review 2

teaching profession. Thus, although previous literature has shown that teacher burnout predicts
teacher turnover intention (Smith and Ingersoll, 2004; Spittle et al., 2015), this study found that it
might in fact be surface acting that increased the level of teacher burnout (Chang, 2013), which in
turn ultimately increased turnover intention.
“The inconsistent mediation model” (MacKinnon et al., 2007: 8) between genuine expression,
teacher burnout, and turnover intention is more complex than the previous mediation model. The
results indicate that genuine expression is negatively associated with teacher burnout, which is
positively related to turnover intention. Thus, PE teachers with genuine expression will experience
less burnout, which can influence the level of turnover intention. This indicates that PE teachers
with more genuine expression will be more likely to have less turnover intention because they will
have lower levels of teacher burnout. Thus, although it is inevitable that teacher burnout increases
the level of turnover intention, this study shows that PE teachers can reduce their turnover intention
by engaging in genuine expression.
Previous research has focused on the relationship between emotional labor and teacher burnout
(Chang, 2013) or on the relationship between teacher burnout and turnover intention (Spittle et
al.,
2015); this study examined the relationships among these variables simultaneously. The results
contribute to the existing knowledge by establishing teacher burnout as an important mediator in
the process of engaging in emotional labor.

Practical implications
Interviews with novice PE teachers conducted by Shoval et al. (2010: 91) captured novice
teachers’ typical descriptions of their response to emotional difficulties as “the need to put on a
mask.” Some respondents stated, “I always try to appear calm, with a smile on my face” and
“When I walk in through the school gate, I put on a happy face.” These quotes clearly
demonstrate PE teachers’ tendencies to engage in surface acting. However, the findings of this
study showed that surface acting was likely to lead to the negative consequences of teacher
burnout and turnover intention. Therefore, PE teachers need to understand the negative
consequences of their typical emotional regulation strategy and try to avoid them.
The finding that deep acting had no relationships with the two dimensions of teacher burnout
(i.e. emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) and had a negative relationship with reduced
per- sonal accomplishment indicates that it is a better strategy to protect one’s well-being
compared with surface acting. For PE teachers to engage in deep acting, Gross (2002) suggested
that individuals who experienced emotional challenges should leave the place in which specific
emotions were elicited before expressing them. Thus, PE teachers experiencing intense negative
emotions might be tempted to instruct students to practice skills on their own and leave the
teaching situation briefly to regain calmness. However, since leaving the classroom is not an
option for teachers, the cognitive change strategy of deep acting (Gross, 2002) may be a better
option. In this strategy, individuals strive to modify their emotions by changing their perception
of given situations. For example, PE teachers confronting rude and disrespectful students can
consider that the students might have problems at home that underlie their negative behaviors.
This thought process may help teachers shift their anger into sympathetic feelings, which in turn
prompts caring behaviors and thus fosters relationships that nurture the students’ growth and
development. However, it is important to note that deep acting also consumes one’s inner
resources, which can result in burnout (Brotheridge and Lee, 2002) because it involves a
cognitive action to reappraise situations (Grandey and Gabriel, 2015). This leads to the
conclusion that it is important for PE teachers to learn how to engage in genuine expression,
because the results suggest that genuine expression reduces burnout and turnover intention.
2L European Physical Education Review 2

Therefore, PE teacher educators should provide instructions for PE teachers to assist them in
engaging in genuine expression. The extant literature agrees that unconscious emotional regu-
lation can be learned through structured intervention programmes (Christou-Champi et al.,
2015). For example, Christou-Champi et al. (2015) found that the emotional regulation process
can become more efficient as instructors engage in specific training sessions. In the training
sessions, participants in the reappraisal condition (i.e. deep acting condition) were exposed to a
series of stimuli (e.g. pictures or video clips) that evoke negative emotions. Then, the partici-
pants were encouraged to reinterpret the contents of the stimuli to change their emotional
experience. The results of their study showed that the training increased the efficiency of the
deep acting strategy, as indicated by the decreased time required to regulate emotions and
increased heart rate variability. More importantly, the study found that participants in the
reappraisal condition could naturally regulate their emotions (i.e. genuine expression) two
weeks later and reported being more habitual in their use of the reappraisal strategy. These
findings indicate that structured practice can facilitate the automatic control of negative
emotions and that these effects can be routinized beyond training (Christou-Champi et al.,
2015).
Taken all together, Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programmes should
consider teaching more effective and health-beneficial strategies of deep acting and genuine
expression to foster teachers’ well-being through their curriculums. Specifically, PETE
programmes need to be designed to help PE teachers understand (a) emotional labor, (b) the
consequences of surface acting, deep acting, and genuine expression, and (c) how to engage in
deep acting and genuine expression at schools. The role-playing exercise can be conducted to
help PE teachers simulate incidents that require them to engage in emotional labor.

Limitations and future research directions

This study has several limitations. First, this is a cross-sectional study, and causal relationships
cannot be inferred from the findings. Future research should implement longitudinal or experi-
mental studies to establish causal relationships for analysis. In addition, the low response rate
(23.4%) limits the study’s generalizability. Although a low response rate does not always indicate
low response representativeness (Lambert and Miller, 2014), future studies need to investigate
other methods to increase response rates. Furthermore, several questionnaires showed relatively
low psychometric properties in terms of reliability and AVE scores. In future research, a pilot
study may be conducted to establish strong psychometric properties before the actual survey.
Although this study has provided evidence that emotional labor and burnout influence turnover
intention, moderators that might mitigate the negative consequences of surface acting and teacher
burnout should be identified. Previous research has identified that social support from schools,
colleagues, and administrators plays a critical role in retaining PE teachers (Ma¨kela¨ et al.,
2014b). Organizational factors including social support, appropriate reward systems, and
increased autonomy may moderate the significant relationships between surface acting, teacher
burnout, and turnover intentions (Kinman et al., 2011).
In addition, as this study focused only on the individual outcomes among PE teachers, future
studies should investigate how emotional labor strategies affect students’ outcomes. Through the
emotional contagion process (Hatfield et al., 1993), PE teachers’ emotions may influence the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of students. Particularly, emotional deviance is a relevant
construct in this respect in that PE teachers’ “out-of-bounds” emotional performance may result
in negative impressions and reactions from students and schools, which in turn result in
significant negative outcomes for students.
 2L European Physical Education Review 2

Finally, future research could usefully focus on novice PE teachers and their struggles with the
emotional demands of their work and subsequent negative outcomes. Ma¨kela¨ et al. (2014a)
found that a considerable number of PE teachers in Finland left their profession within 5 years.
Teachers experience cultural shock and reality shock in terms of professional development and
emotional experience (Armour and Yelling, 2004); they should be made aware of the realities of
the teaching profession and receive assistance to develop emotional coping strategies.

Conclusion
The underlying motivations to investigate emotional labor were to help identify the important
underlying mechanisms of PE teachers’ turnover intention and to provide new insights into the
reasons that prompt these professionals to leave the profession.
PE teachers inevitably engage in the emotional labor process as a means of building an emo-
tional connection with students and providing them multiple benefits (Stuhr et al., 2012).
However, Shoval et al. (2010) found that PE teachers tended to perform surface acting in this
process. This study provides a warning sign among those PE teachers, because the findings show
that this process can negatively influence their well-being. Specifically, PE teachers who tended
to suppress their negative emotions and show a fake outward emotional display were more likely
to burn out and consider leaving their profession. To overcome this problem, this study urges
such profes- sionals to engage in deep acting (trying to change one’s inner feelings first and then
express emotions) because there was no relationship between deep acting and teacher burnout.
Finally, if PE teachers utilize genuine expression, their well-being will increase.
Furthermore, school administrators and PETE programmes should consider ways to help PE
teachers engage in more effective coping strategies of deep acting and genuine expression in a
more efficient way to keep them in their professions and schools. The researcher suggests that
this study can be the starting point to explore the emotional challenges derived from PE teaching
and to encourage researchers to examine how these differences in emotional labor can affect
teaching effectiveness.

Acknowledgements
I sincerely thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers whose comments/inputs helped improve the
quality of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: This research was funded by a grant from University of North Alabama Research
Committee.

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Author biography
Ye Hoon Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at
University of North Alabama in the United States. His research areas focus on organizational theory and
behavior, and leadership in sport sciences.

Appendix 1

Variable Measure/item

Surface acting I put on an act in order to deal with students in an appropriate way
I put on a “show” or “performance” when interacting with students
I just pretend to have the emotion I need to display for my job
I put on a “mask” in order to display the emotions I need for the job
I fake the emotions I show when dealing with students
Deep acting I try to actually experience the emotions that I must show to students
I make an effort to actually feel the emotions that I need to display toward others
I work hard to feel the emotions that I need to show to students
Genuine expression The emotions I express to students are genuine
The emotions I show students come naturally
The emotions I show students match what I spontaneously feel
Turnover intention It is likely I will actively look for a new job in the next year
I often think about quitting teaching
It would take very little change in my present circumstances to cause me to leave
teaching
There’s not too much to be gained by sticking with teaching indefinitely