Self-efficacy and job burnout among early childhood physical education teachers: exploratory indirect associations through the negative compassion-fatigue domain and professional identity moderation

Background Early childhood physical education teachers work at the intersection of early childhood education and physical education, yet psychological factors associated with job burnout in this group remain underexamined. Guided by the Job Demands–Resources model, this study examined associations among self-efficacy, an exploratory negative-domain composite, professional identity, and job burnout, including an indirect association and moderation of the direct association. Methods A cross-sectional online survey using snowball sampling included 588 early childhood physical education teachers in Chengdu, China (555 women, 33 men; mean age = 26.12 years, SD = 5.77). Participants completed the Chinese short-form Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale, an adapted 15-item Chinese compassion-fatigue questionnaire, the Chinese Maslach Burnout Inventory-Education Survey, and the Teacher Professional Identity Scale. An exploratory 10-item negative-domain composite was constructed from five burnout-related and five secondary traumatic stress (STS) items, excluding the five compassion-satisfaction items. Pearson correlations and PROCESS Models 4 and 5 were estimated, adjusting for age and gender. Indirect associations were evaluated using 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Results Self-efficacy was negatively correlated with job burnout (r = −0.38, p < 0.001) and positively correlated with the negative-domain composite (r = 0.16, p < 0.001), which was also positively correlated with job burnout (r = 0.19, p < 0.001). The adjusted indirect association through the composite was positive (ab = 0.081, 95% CI [0.034, 0.143]) and opposed the negative direct association (B = −0.778, p < 0.001). Professional identity moderated the direct association (interaction B = −0.263, p < 0.001; ΔR 2 = 0.018), which was nonsignificant at low professional identity (B = −0.086, 95% CI [−0.260, 0.088]) and strongest at high professional identity (B = −0.422, 95% CI [−0.610, −0.234]). Conclusion Higher self-efficacy was associated with lower job burnout, and this negative association was stronger at higher levels of professional identity. The positive indirect association through the exploratory negative-domain composite was small and sensitive to its operationalization. Given the cross-sectional design and measurement limitations, these findings should be interpreted as exploratory statistical associations rather than evidence of causal mechanisms.