Introducing emo-educational divorce and examining its relationship with teaching burnout, teaching motivation, and teacher success

Emo-educational divorce is a newly developed concept referring to the loss of emotional investment in teaching or a particular course. It plays a vital role in guiding teachers and school administrators to minimize the detrimental effects of this phenomenon and enhance teaching quality. The present study aimed to develop a scale to measure teachers' emo-educational divorce. It also examined the relationship between emo-educational divorce, teacher success, teaching motivation, and burnout. A total of 552 teachers (males: 171; females: 381) representing both social sciences and non-social sciences with different educational backgrounds completed the four questionnaires: emo-educational divorce, teaching burnout, teaching motivation, and teaching success scales. The results were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS to determine descriptive and inferential statistics. The study revealed that the emo-educational divorce scale enjoyed psychometric properties. This study also demonstrated that emo-educational divorce negatively correlated with teacher success and teaching motivation but positively correlated with teacher burnout. Mediated by emo-educational divorce, teacher success was negatively predicted by teaching burnout yet positively predicted by teaching motivation in the path analysis models. However, the indirect relationships between teacher success and teaching burnout did not obtain a significant value. The study concludes with a discussion of the emo-educational divorce concept, its potential sources, and implications for research.