Work-stress, coping, and emotional exhaustion of school principals in Germany and Switzerland

BACKGROUND: While student and teacher health enjoy a high level of interest in health research, research on the health of school leaders has hardly been studied so far, especially in the German-speaking countries. How school leaders cope with work-related stress and the extent to which work-related coping behaviors are associated with mental health has not been studied to date. This paper focuses on the relationship between work-related stress and exhaustion of school leaders in Germany and Switzerland during the COVID-19 pandemic, using the job demands-resources model. METHODS: Data from the COVID-HL school leadership study are used, which was conducted in 2021 with N = 2186 school leaders from Germany and N = 293 school leaders from Switzerland. Structural equation modeling in R (R Team, 2020) is used to model the relation of stress, coping strategies, and exhaustion. Coping behavior, measured as different strategies for dealing with stress, is examined as potential explanation for the relationship between stress and exhaustion. RESULTS: The study shows systematic country differences to the disadvantage of German school leaders for all factors: German school leaders report to be more stressed, and they engage more in self-endangering coping strategies such as intensification of work, extensification of worktime or quality reduction in their work. In addition, German school leaders are more exhausted than Swiss school leaders. Stress is associated with exhaustion and is partly mediated through the strategy of intensifying work (working in a pace that is burdensome). Stress also causes school leaders to work longer hours and reduce the quality of work, but this has no further influence on exhaustion. CONCLUSIONS: School leaders should become a target of school health promotion. There is a need for a holistic stress prevention, which promotes not only healthy work conditions but also adaptive coping strategies.