Emotional burnout in teachers of different age, length of service and level of the educational organization

Abstract

Emotional burnout in teachers working in modern educational environment becomes not just a subject of scientific research, but is transformed into a relevant practice-oriented objective aimed at preventing this professional deformation. It cannot be reached without a comprehensive study of emotional burnout in teachers taking into account their socio-demographic characteristics (age and length of service) as well as the place of employment (preschool educational organizations, general secondary education organizations and professional education organizations). The above is the purpose of our work. Two standardized methods were used to reveal the level of emotional burnout and the degree of its individual symptoms — the test ‘Diagnostics of the level of emotional burnout’ by V.V. Boyko and the ‘Diagnostics of emotional burnout’ by K. Maslach and S. Jackson, adapted by N. E. Vodopyanova. Data were collected with the help of the Yandex Forms service from 976 teachers with the average age of 45.56 years (ϭ=12.3) and the average length of teaching experience of 20.5 years (ϭ=13.3). Of these, 93% were women and 7% were men. The teachers came from three levels of educational organizations: preschool education, general education and professional education, and lived in more than 20 federal subjects of the Russian Federation. The obtained data were processed using mathematical and statistical analysis methods (descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, one-factor dispersion analysis and correlation analysis). The comparative analysis showed that emotional burnout indicators are higher in school teachers (Х = 133.2) and ср the lowest in teachers providing professional education (Х = 109.8). Correlation analysis demonstrated that stable ср inverse correlation of the general expression of the emotional burnout syndrome (according to the results of two methods) with age and length of service is observed only in general education teachers. It is noteworthy that preschool and professional education teachers show no significant correlations between age or length of service and the general level of emotional burnout, but there are statistically reliable correlations of its individual symptoms. The identified patterns can be used in developing targeted psychoprophylactic influence to prevent emotional burnout in teachers.