Self-Efficacy and Burnout Syndrome among Teachers

Since the burnout syndrome is highly prevalent in the teaching profession, there is a great need to identify protective factors from chronic stress and long-term professional dissatisfaction among teachers. One of these could be self-efficacy. This study examines the connection between burnout syndrome and self-efficacy among the teachers at Czech grammar schools. The sample consists of 2394 teachers at Czech grammar schools. The survey instrument were two questionnaires which included: 1) Shirom-Melamed Burnout Scale and 2) Czech Teachers Self-efficacy Scale which was developed within the study. Both instruments showed good reliability (over .90) and other acceptable psychometrics. The findings revealed that the correlation between burnout and self-efficacy was significant and different rates of burnout among teachers with high self-efficacy and low self-efficacy. In conclusion, the study detected a negative correlation between self-efficacy and burnout syndrome. A strong correlation was found between emotional burnout and self-efficacy. The correlations between burnout subscales and self-efficacy subscales were also considered. The differences based on gender, teaching experience and educational level were also considered with regard to burnout and self-efficacy. The three-factor structure of the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Scale and its excellent psychometrics, including high reliability, were confirmed for the Czech version (Ptacek et al., in print). The original SMBM includes 14 items divided into three subscales. However, for the purpose of this study, only 13 items were used because in the Czech language two items referring to physical exhaustion are too close in meaning and show an unacceptably high correlation. The norms (the mean scores) were adapted to 13 items in total.