Emotion regulation and teacher work-related well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: A serial mediation model

Teachers’ ability to regulate emotions is widely recognized as a fundamental personal resource for handling stress and buffering the negative effects of occupational strain on well-being. Yet, studies exploring how emotion regulation is related to teachers’ well-being during the COVID-19 period remain relatively limited. The COVID-19 pandemic represented a major stressor for teachers worldwide, profoundly disrupting school communities and creating unprecedented challenges for educators’ health and well-being. During this period, teachers faced numerous demands and stressors that negatively affected their occupational well-being, highlighting the critical role of personal resources in facilitating positive job attitudes. This exploratory study tested an integrative model of the links between emotion regulation and job satisfaction via work-related rumination and emotional exhaustion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in a Spanish teacher sample (N = 723; 62.4% female; Mage = 44.39 years). Work-related rumination and emotional exhaustion played a sequential mediating role between emotion regulation and job satisfaction. These findings underscore the importance of addressing stress management and emotion regulation development as part of multifaceted interventions to protect teacher well-being against the psychological burden of global crises.