Abstract:

The syndrome of emotional burnout and occupational stress has recently become a common cause of the decreased quality of educators’ labor and therefore of the reduced effectiveness of the learning process. Physical education (PE) teachers are susceptible to job burnout as well as other educators.

Our study is dedicated to quantitative and qualitative indicators of burnout in PE teachers in Chelyabinsk (Russia). Susceptibility to job burnout in educators was analyzed using the emotional burnout assessment method by Boiko. According to this method, the burnout process includes 3 main phases and 12 component symptoms. The first phase is a phase of tension; the second one is a phase when stress is being resisted, but it takes a lot of effort, so professional duties are neglected and some emotional detachment is observed; the third phase is a phase of exhaustion when the teacher suffers emotional deficiency, depersonalization, and a whole range of psychosomatic and psychovegetative dysfunctional symptoms.

The sample included 200 PE teachers of Chelyabinsk schools (20 men and 180 women). Fourteen participants had experience less than 5 years; twelve – less than 10 years; forty-nine – less than 20 years; forty-six – less than 25 years; and seventy-nine – over 25 years. The analysis showed that the sample was representative for the overall situation in the education system –namely, so called “staff ageing” – as 60% of the respondents were older than 45 and had experience of 20 years minimum.

According to the results, 21% of the participants were susceptible to the risk of job burnout syndrome. Taking borderline cases into account increased this number to 29%, which is very high especially considering that even though Physical Education is generally the only subject which involves physical activity and is characterized by an intensive emotional background of classes.

The analysis of burnout syndrome development showed that the phase of tension was observed in 30% of the teachers, resistance – in 34%, and exhaustion – in 15%. These values indicate that the majority of PE teachers are at risk of burnout, which means that necessary measures for correction and prevention should be taken as soon as possible.

The authors suggest conceptual approaches to job burnout syndrome prevention. All related factors are classified into two categories: professional activity and individual personal features of physical education teachers. The first category is within the competence of school authorities and comprises reasonable distribution of teaching loads throughout the day, incentive for teachers (both material and moral), and formation of optimal labor conditions (first of all, the appropriate number of students per class) and friendly environment. The second category is under the supervision of school counselors who are to carry out a long and meticulous work to help the teacher without judging professional aspects of his/her activity. The authors believe that individual work should precede group one which includes educational seminars and preventive trainings to develop the skills of ability to handle stress, time management, activity planning, effective co-operation, communicative competence, and ability to cope with negative emotions.

Keywords:

PE teachers, job burnout, emotional burnout.