Predictors of educators’ professional uncertainty: the roles of compassion satisfaction, burnout, stress, and length of service

Existing research has identified a range of factors that predict professional uncertainty among early educators, yet less attention has been directed towards compassion satisfaction, which has been defined as the pleasure derived from successfully helping others, and its facilitative role in educator resilience and retention. Grounded in a social conception of teacher resilience, this study examined the relations among compassion satisfaction, perceptions of burnout and secondary stress, and professional uncertainty among a sample of K-12 educators (N = 144). Educators’ length of service was examined as a moderator of the direct effect of compassion satisfaction on professional uncertainty and the indirect effect of compassion satisfaction on uncertainty through burnout and secondary stress. We obtained evidence that the effect of compassion satisfaction on professional uncertainty varied by educators’ length of service; compassion satisfaction was negatively and more strongly associated with professional uncertainty for educators with fewer years of service. The effect of compassion satisfaction on educators’ professional uncertainty was mediated by burnout but not secondary stress in the model. Compassion satisfaction may serve as a protective factor in educator resilience. We draw out implications for further study and promotion of resilience among early educators.