Abstract

This study was conducted to identify latent groups in burnout among elementary school teachers, examine the transition patterns of latent groups before and after COVID-19, and determine how job demands, namely workload, time pressure, role ambiguity, and role conflict, affected the classification and transition of latent groups. Latent profile analysis and latent transition analysis were conducted using the data from 250 elementary school teachers in Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi. There were four major results. The first result was that teacher burnout was classified as either the under-challenged type, the moderate burn-out type, or the emotional exhausted type. The second result was that role conflict and role ambiguity affected latent group classification before COVID-19 while workload, role conflict, and role ambiguity affected it after COVID-19. The third result was that those in the under-challenged type group before COVID-19 stayed in the same group or moved to the moderate burn-out type group after COVID-19. Those in the moderate burn-out type group before COVID-19 stayed in the same group or moved to the emotional exhausted group after COVID-19. Those in the emotional exhausted group remained in the same latent group after COVID-19. The fourth result was that workload and role ambiguity predicted the transition between latent groups before and after COVID-19. This paper discusses the implications of these results.