Job Burnout And Its Related Factors Of Teachers Of Special Schools For The Mentally Retarded In Shanghai

Job burnout is a syndrome of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization and Diminished Personal Accomplishment, produced by prolonged response to chronic continuing pressures on the job. Emotional Exhaustion is the core content of job burnout, refers to the depletion or draining of emotional resources. Depersonalization means a negative, callous and cynical attitude toward the recipients of one's services. Diminished Personal Accomplishment is the tendency to evaluate one's achievement negatively.The aim of this research was to investigate the status of burnout and its effective factors among 219 special education teachers of 9 schools for students with mental retardation in Shanghai. All subjects completed Maslach Burnout Inventory, Teachers Burnout Effective Factors Questionnaires designed by the researcher, Self-Esteem Scale, and Internality Scale.The results showed as follows:(1) In general, the burnout of respondents was not very serious. The most of (about 60%) sample experienced low levels of Depersonalization (DP). About two-thirds of teachers got the middle degree score of Emotional Exhaustion (EE) and Diminished Personal Accomplishment (PA).(2) Developed the Teachers Burnout Related Factors Questionnaire, which has been analyzed by explorative factor analysis, contained 9 components: organizing justice, reward, recognizing, working-load, students, working condition, knowledge and competence, relationship, and family. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire were reasonable.(3) Demographic variables with significant differences between groupings included: teachers' age, teaching period, education background, whether satisfied with the salary, and the title of a technical post. There were no differences between special education teacher burnout effect sizes when the teachers were grouped according to the following demographic variables: gender, quantity of school teaching per week, and whether the school located in city or suburb. The interactive effect of 'quantity of school teaching per week' and 'school's location' could influence the score of Depersonalization. While the interactive effect of gender and age could influence teachers' score of Diminished Personal Accomplishment.(4) The effective factors of burnout included: relationship, social support, working-load, knowledge and competence, recognizing, organizing justice, family, self-esteem, reward, working condition, and students. All these factors had different effect to the three dimension of burnout. Some effects were direct, others were indirect.(5) The recommendations of preventing and intervening special education teacher burnout were suggested.