The relationship between the environmental safety of the school educational environment and teacher burnout

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to study the relationship between the components of professional burnout and indicators of educational environment safety. A correlation study was conducted with 43 teachers from 2 schools from different regions of Russia, average age 42.2 years, all women. It was shown that a decrease in the safety of the educational environment leads to the development of symptoms of emotional exhaustion and reduction in professional achievements in the teacher. Unsatisfactory relations of a teacher with colleagues and superiors, forcing them to work against their will, by means of threats, impossibility to express their point of view accelerate professional burnout most of all. The relationship between a teacher’s attitude to the educational environment and burnout was also found: the greatest connection is with the emotional component (the teacher stops liking the work), behavioural component (the teacher wants to quit it); the cognitive component (general idea of work as a way of self-realisation) is not connected with burnout. The conclusion assumes that by increasing the safety of educational environment, it is possible to slow down the professional burnout of teachers, and thus contribute to their professional longevity.