BACKGROUND: Teacher leadership refers to the strategies used by teachers to influence academic administrators, faculty colleagues, and other educational decision-makers to promote processes that enhance student growth and institutional development. It has been proposed in the literature that teacher leadership may be an important process that influences students' academic burnout. However, teacher leadership has received less attention from researchers than other potential causes of student burnout. Previous research has focused mainly on the perspectives of principals (i.e., academic leaders) and teachers. Few studies have reported the perspectives of students, treated teacher leadership as an independent variable, or conducted in-depth research on the relationships between this factor and students' professional commitment and academic burnout. This study explores the relationships among teacher leadership and medical students' professional commitment and academic burnout as well as the mediating role of professional commitment in this context.
METHODS: A questionnaire was completed by 568 medical students at one medical school. The questionnaire consisted of three validated and widely used data collection instruments: the Teacher Leadership Scale, the College Student Academic Burnout Scale, and the Professional Commitment Scale.
RESULTS: Teacher leadership was significantly correlated with reduced academic burnout, mediated by professional commitment. Both teacher leadership and professional commitment were significantly negatively correlated with academic burnout among medical students, while teacher leadership was significantly positively correlated with professional commitment.
CONCLUSIONS: Teacher leadership was significantly correlated with reduced academic burnout, mediated by professional commitment. Enhancing teacher leadership and fostering professional commitment could mitigate burnout among medical students.
