Beyond a Single Continuum: Latent Profiles of Flourishing and Burnout Among Chinese Teachers

Teacher flourishing and burnout have often been viewed as opposing work experiences, implying that higher levels of one should be accompanied by lower levels of the other. However, recent research suggests that these experiences can coexist within the same individual. We extend this line of research by using latent profile analysis to examine how multiple dimensions of flourishing and burnout combine in different ways among 5694 primary and secondary school teachers in China. Five profiles were identified: Broadly Adaptive (61.19%), Struggling (19.41%), Engaged–Strained (8.96%), Unfulfilled (6.29%), and Depleted–Disconnected (4.16%). Broadly Adaptive and Struggling teachers followed the expected inverse pattern between flourishing and burnout. In contrast, Engaged–Strained teachers maintained moderate levels of flourishing and relatively high personal accomplishment despite substantial emotional exhaustion and depersonalization; Unfulfilled teachers showed favorable flourishing and low exhaustion and depersonalization but extremely low personal accomplishment; and Depleted–Disconnected teachers showed particularly poor emotional and social well-being alongside elevated exhaustion. These findings advance our understanding of teacher flourishing and burnout beyond a single-continuum model, although sensitivity analyses indicated that the retained profile solution was sensitive to the composition of the personal accomplishment measure, particularly for the Struggling and Unfulfilled profiles. Rather than asking simply whether teachers are flourishing or struggling with burnout, schools may benefit from asking in what areas teachers are feeling or functioning well and in what areas they are struggling.