Burnout in Relation to Gender, Educational Attainment, and Experience among Malaysian ELT Practitioners

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1 Burnout in Relation to Gender, Educational Attainment, and Experience among Malaysian ELT Practitioners Jayakaran Mukundan, Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia Koroush Khandehroo, Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia ABSTRACT This study focused on a group of English language teachers burnout (N=120) with reference to their demographics of sex, teaching experience and educational level. The findings showed that burnout was evident among Malaysian English teachers at high levels in all dimensions. In addition, experience and educational level among males and females demonstrated significant relations with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. The findings of this study might help school system administrators regard such demographic factors as crucial in recruitment decision makings and retention programs. INTRODUCTION While a lot of attempts have been made to study burnout in health care professions (see, e.g., Miró, Solanes, Martínez, Sánchez, & Rodríguez, 2007; Moreno, Morett, Rodríguez, & Morante, 2006), the empirical data have also identified teachers as high risk in a lot of research projects (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Shaufeli & Buunk, 2002). Because students experience the immediate effects of the teachers performance, the issue of teacher burnout is worth being elaborated. The concept of burnout was first set up by Freudenbeger in 1974 as wearing down or depleting energy (Freudenburger and North, 1985). Maslach, one of the pioneering figures studying burnout, defined it as a syndrome of physical and emotional exhaustion including the development of negative job attitudes, poor professional self concept, and low empathetic concern for clients (Maslach and Pines, 1984). Accordingly, she presented the three dimensions of burnout as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Schaufeli and Buunk (2002) considered that the best approach to the phenomenon of teachers difficulties is characterized in the three dimensions, including (1) a physical dimension relating to exhaustion as an external symptom, (2) a mental distancing from teacher activities, and (3) a reduced professional efficacy. Emotional exhaustion refers to the feelings of over-extension and exhaustion resulting from daily conflict in work environment. It is particularly defined as the lack of enthusiasm and the sense of emotional draining by other people among teachers (Gavrilovici, 2007). indicates the development of negative attitudes and impersonal behaviors to people in relation to the profession such as students for teachers. It is also the emotionally dry and detached manner of relating to others. Personal accomplishment is the sense of personal fulfillment coming with self-esteem that is negatively related to burnout; the more people suffer from burnout, the worse they feel about their personal accomplishment. Lack of feeling of success and accomplishment among teachers is defined as reduced professional efficacy, which is the negative belief of ones self capability in classroom. The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 5, Num. 2, December

2 Although demographic factors have been found relating to burnout among teachers in different studies, very few of them have ever been conducted in the scope of subject specific teachers. This study focused on English teachers in Malaysia who were predicted to indicate burnout as they carry the responsibility of teaching in English as a Second Language (ESL) context where nearly the entire population s first language is not English. Sources of burnout according to Schwab and Iwanicki (1982) are introduced as background, individual personality, and organizational factors. Educational level, type of graduation degree, etc. are related to the background category while age, gender, number of children and the like fall under the individual personality category. Class size, work environment, workload and the like are recognized as organizational factors. This study sought to determine the burnout level of the primary and secondary school teachers in Malaysia as measured by their scores on emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment. The additional purpose of this study was to investigate if significant relationships exist between burnout dimensions and the participants sex, experience and educational level. METHODS The sample of the study was the 184 participants, all of whom were involved in English Language Teaching (ELT). They were randomly selected and were sent questionnaires. The response rate was 65%. They were all English teachers teaching in Malaysian primary and secondary schools. As for their sex, 37% of the participants were males and 63% were females. The majority of them, about 64.2%, were Bachelor s degree holders while 18.3% were Masters, 15.8% Diploma, and 1.6% PhD degree holders. Out of the whole population, 62% had teaching experience ranging from 6 to 25 years whereas 18% were above and 20% were below this range. To measure the burnout level of the teachers, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) Educators Survey (1986), with 22 items was utilized. The questionnaire encompasses three subscales of emotional exhaustion with nine items, depersonalization with five items, and personal accomplishment with eight items. MBI describes burnout syndrome in terms of (a) high levels of emotional exhaustion, (b) high levels of depersonalization, (c) reduced personal accomplishment. Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter (1996) reported the questionnaire acceptable since the internal reliability sores were.90 for emotional exhaustion,.79 for depersonalization, and.71 for personal accomplishment. -retest coefficients were.82 for emotional exhaustion,.60 for depersonalization, and.80 for personal accomplishment. The demographics of the English teachers were provided by a questionnaire eliciting information about the participants sex, experience and educational level. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Data analysis was conducted by the use of SPSS version 16. One-sample t-test was the statistical procedure employed on the scores of participants on emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Low, moderate, and high are the three typical levels of burnout; however, only high levels of the three dimensions were considered for elaboration in this study. Literature reports studies suggesting the score ranges for each subscale to define high level of burnout (Rosenberg and Pace, 2006). Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization scores exceeding 27 and 13 respectively and reduced personal accomplishment scores below 31 are considered to be high. 94 The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 5, Num. 2, December 2009

3 Dimensions of burnout as shown in table 1 are significantly high since the significant p is less than 0.05 among all participants who are in the high level intervals. Table 1: Statistics and one-sample t-test for burnout dimensions Burnout N SD Emotional Exhaustion Reduced Personal Accomplishment To determine whether sex, experience and educational level represent significance in high levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment, one-sample t-test was employed for the scores of those participants in each group. With reference to table 2, participants with less than 25 years of teaching experience showed to be emotionally exhausted significantly. Interestingly, the ones with more than 26 years of experience were not exhausted emotionally. In table 3, depersonalization among teachers with diverse experience has been presented through which only less experienced teachers with 5 and fewer years did not show signs of depersonalization, whereas those who were more experienced suffered from it. Reduced personal accomplishment, as represented in table 4, was evident among teachers with less than 5 and those with more than 26 years of experience while teachers with experience between 6 to 25 years seemed not to be affected by reduced personal accomplishment. Table 2: Statistics and one-sample t-test for emotional exhaustion with reference to experience Emotional Exhaustion Experience N SD < > Table 3: Statistics and one-sample t-test for depersonalization with reference to experience Experience N SD < > The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 5, Num. 2, December

4 Experience Table 4: Statistics and one-sample t-test for reduced personal accomplishment with reference to Experience Reduced Personal Accomplishment N SD < > In Tables 5 to 7, three dimensions of burnout have been represented in relation to the educational levels of the English teachers. Bachelor degree holders being the highest number in population, showed a greater tendency towards becoming emotionally exhausted as well as being affected by depersonalization while the ones with Diploma, Masters and PhD did not. Masters and Bachelors also suffered from reduced personal accomplishment whereas Diploma and PD holders did not. Educational Level N SD Table 5: Statistics and one-sample t-test for emotional exhaustion with reference to educational level Emotional Exhaustion Diploma Bachelor Master PhD Table 6: Statistics and one-sample t-test for depersonalization with reference to educational level Educational Level N SD Diploma Bachelor Master PhD The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 5, Num. 2, December 2009

5 Educational Level N SD Table 7: Statistics and one-sample t-test for reduced personal accomplishment with reference to educational level Reduced Personal Accomplishment Diploma Bachelor Master PhD Scores pertaining to sex were also examined and elaborated with reference to burnout dimensions as presented in tables 8 to 10. Female teachers mean score of emotional fatigue had proved to be very much higher than males. However, females did not show signs of high levels of depersonalization whereas males mean score represented a great difference from the test value. Finally, both males and females indicated reduced personal accomplishment significantly. Table 8: Statistics and one-sample t-test for emotional exhaustion with reference to sex Emotional Exhaustion Sex N SD Male Female Table 9: Statistics and one-sample t-test for depersonalization with reference to sex Sex N SD Lower Male Female Upper Sex N SD Table 10: Statistics and one-sample t-test for reduced personal accomplishment with reference to sex Male Female The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 5, Num. 2, December

6 CONCLUSION This research focused on gender, experience and educational level to illuminate whether these factors could be relevant to the presence of burnout dimensions. Based on the data presented above, emotional exhaustion was noticed among females with less than 25 years of teaching experience with the Bachelor s degree. This shows that the experienced teachers are were not affected by such exhaustion significantly. occurred among males with Diploma and Bachelor s degree having more than 6 years of experience. This might prove that experienced male teachers having lower degrees (Diplomas and Bachelors) would probably depersonalize the learners whereas female teachers with higher degrees may not. This can also imply that less experienced teachers are more responsive to their students than the experienced ones. Reduced personal accomplishment or lack of teaching efficacy appears to be in males and females with Bachelors and/or Master s degree having 25 and more as well as those with less than 5 years of experience. Since burnout brings about negative effects in the instructional system leading to probable unsuccessful learning in classroom, it can be recommended that school administrators grant more opportunities of extra curricular activities to help overcome the syndrome. Referring to the findings of this study, females holding Bachelor s degree with average years of experience need to be emotionally supported, whereas males with the same educational qualifications who are more susceptible to depersonalization need to be encouraged to do activities which help them overcome this problem. Reduced personal accomplishment which is reported as high in this sample would decrease if school administrators provide English teachers with professional development programs through which they find out more about their self efficacy in teaching. Further research seems necessary to determine the effect of individual and organizational factors on burnout among teachers. REFERENCES Freudenburger, H. J. & North G. (1985). Women s burnout: How to stop it, how to reserve it and how to prevent it. R. R. Donneley and Sons Company, Virginia, USA. Gavrilovici, L. O. (2007). Romanian teachers burnout and psychological and professional difficulties, Retrieved 20 July, 2009 from Maslach, C., Jackson, S.E., & Leiter, M. P. (1996). Maslach burnout inventory manual (3rd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W.B., & Leiter, M.P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review Psychology, 52, Miró, E., Solanes, A., Martínez, P., Sánchez, A.I., & Rodríguez, J. (2007). Relación entre el burnout o «síndrome de quemarse por el trabajo», la tensión laboral y las características del sueño Psicothema, 19, Moreno, B., Morett, N.I., Rodríguez, A., & Morante, M.E. (2006). La personalidad resistente como variable moduladora del síndrome de burnout en una muestra de bomberos. Psicothema, 18, Rosenberg, T. & Pace, M Burnout among mental health professionals: Special considerations for the marriage and family therapist. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 32, 1, pp Schaufeli, W.B., & Buunk, B.P. (2002). Burnout and overview of 25 years of research and theorizing. The handbook of work and health psychology (2 ed.; pp ). Chichester: Wiley. Schwab, R. L., & Iwanicki, E. F. (1982). Who are our burned out teachers? Educational Research Quarterly, 7, pp The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning Vol. 5, Num. 2, December 2009