Burnout and Self-Perceived Instructional Competence: An Exploratory Study of a Group of Italian Female Elementary School Teachers

Abstract

Since the first half of the 1980s, burnout in teachers has been the object of particular attention by many international authors. Teachers are subject, more than other professions, to numerous and heavy pressures, covering the peculiarity of the profession. The objectives of the present research are to measure the predictive role of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment on the quality of teaching in a group of elementary school teachers. We carried out a cross-sectional study involving 324 Sicilian female teachers, who worked in three school orders: Kindergarten, primary school, and the first year of middle school. Participants completed a socio-demographic questionnaire, the assessment teaching scale for primary school teachers (ECAD-EP), and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). In reference to the level of burnout, the correlation analysis underlined the presence of a positive correlation between: Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization; and a negative correlation between exhaustion and depersonalization. Furthermore, a predictive role of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment on the quality of teaching in a group of primary school teachers was found.

Self-Perceived Instructional Competence, Self-Efficacy and Burnout during the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study of a Group of Italian School Teachers

“…Confirming the fourth hypothesis (H4), elevated personal accomplishment was predictive of the emotional, socio-relational, and didactic competences before and during the pandemic; during Time 2, the depersonalization was a predictor of the communicativerelational and didactic dimensions. These data are confirmed by the literature, which states that greater personal satisfaction determines the presence of elevated socio-relational resources of the teacher, which is useful to cope with difficult interactions with parents and colleagues [26,35]. In addition, during the pandemic, elevated experience seemed to predict the use of the emotional and communicative-relational strategies; furthermore, teaching in a primary school with a reduced number of disabled students predicted the use of adaptive emotional strategies.…”

Stigmatization of Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Healthcare workers who had experienced stigma reported increased psychological problems which could eventually lead to 17 increased somatic symptoms. Therefore, stigma toward healthcare workers has been studied and analyzed [18][19][20][21][22] .Therefore, it is really essential to study the pandemic factor stigma on healthcare workers' performance [23][24][25] . Stigma has been recognized as a health issue which must be dealt 26 .…”

Mindfulness as a Protective Factor for Dissatisfaction in HCWs: The Moderating Role of Mindful Attention between Climate Stress and Job Satisfaction

“…The literature that focused on identifying the organizational factors that are most linked with negative organizational perceptions and outcomes considered, overall, five major sources of occupational stress: roles of the individual in the organization, career development, in-working relationships and, organizational structure and climate [7,8].…”