A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Relationship Between Sabbath Practices and US, Canadian, Indonesian, and Paraguayan Teachers’ Burnout

Across different faith traditions, Sabbath day observance shares a close relationship with theological conceptions of rest. Sabbath-keeping, with its promise of rest, may be a valuable spiritual practice in the context of teaching as prior research has consistently documented the adverse effects of teacher burnout. Yet no research has examined Sabbath-keeping and its connections to teaching practices and teacher burnout. We aim to fill this gap with a quantitative study of Sabbath-keeping and burnout among 1,300 teachers in Christian schools throughout the USA, Canada, Indonesia, and Paraguay. We report their conceptions of Sabbath and how those conceptions inform their teaching practice. We find an inverse and statistically significant relationship between Sabbath-keeping and burnout that is robust across several model specifications, suggesting that Sabbath-keeping may be helpful in reducing burnout among educators.