THE EFFECT OF GENDER, MARITAL STATUS AND BABY SITTER ON BURNOUT OF ENGLISH TEACHER IN SAUDI ARABIA

Azadeh Asgari (Corresponding author) C-3-22, Selatan Perdana, Taman Serdang perdana, Seri Kembangan Serdang, PO box 43300, Selangor, Malaysia Tel: 6-017-350-7194 E-mail: Azia.Asgari@gmail.com

Abstract: Teacher burnout is a world-wide phenomenon that draws the attention of educational psychologists and stimulates efforts in construct elaboration and measurement. Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishments are three dimensions that constitute the burnout syndrome. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of gender, marital status and babysitter on burnout of teacher among 50 English teachers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This paper is described the quantitative data. All participants of the study were Saudi Arabia citizens who were worked in Riyadh. For determining the level of burnout experienced by English teachers Maslach Burnout Inventory test (MBI) was conducted. Consequently, based upon the findings, an English teachers gender seems to influence teachers responses on each of the sub-scales of the Maslach Burnout Inventory so there was significant difference between the gender and burnout, whereas the study found that there were no significant differences between the marital status and babysitter of the English teacher scores on the MBI. Keyword: Gender, Marital status, Babysitter, Burnout, English Teacher Introduction: Much of the research in the area of burnout can be traced to Herbert Freudenberger, a psychologist practicing in New York during the 1960s and 70s, who used the term to describe the effects of overwork, exhaustion and frustration he experienced while operating a free clinic for drug users and indigent persons. This concept was first introduced by Freudenberger in 1974. In 1974, Freudenberger defined the problem as one of chronic exhaustion and frustration resulting from continued devotion to a goal or principle that has failed to produce a corresponding reward. It was defined as wearing down or wearing out of

energy (Freudenberger & North, 1985). Some other views can be added to Freudenberger's to give a meaning the concept of burnout. According to Pines and Anderson (1988) burnout is formally defined and subjectively experienced as a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by long-term involvement in situation that are emotionally demanding. The term burnout originated during the 1960s as a description of the effect of drug abuse on an individual (Golembiewski, 1993 as cited in Landeche, 2009). Maslach is one of the pioneers in the study of teacher burnout which was as a syndrome of physical and emotional exhaustion involving the development of negative job attitudes, poor professional self-concept, and loss of empathus concern for client (Maslach & Pines, 1984). Maslach (1981) defined burnout as a condition characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and loss of a sense of personal accomplishment. This condition evolves primarily in individuals who work in human services occupations such as education, social work, police and emergency services. Burnout is manifested in the following ways: work overload, lack of control over ones work environment, lack of community among teachers in the school, lack of fairness in work assignments and the uneven distribution or absence of rewards (Maslach, 1981).

Emotional Exhaustion

Depersonalization

Personal Accomplishment Figure 1. The Dimensions of Burnout (Sedgwick, 1998)

Emotional Exhaustion indicates the feelings of over extension and exhaustion caused by daily work pressures, and conflicts with the colleagues. Depersonalization refers to the developments of negative attitude and impersonal responses towards the people with whom one works. Personal Accomplishment means the sense of personal achievement, accompanied by self-esteem. It is inversely related with burnout. Burnout can be a fundamental cause of an endless list of bad side-effects, not only on the person who suffer from this syndrome but also all will the people around him/her be affected (Landeche, 2009). As mentioned earlier that a teacher is the main component of 2

teaching process, so that when the teacher has this syndrome, this will make him/ her treat the students irrespectively and he/ she will not be able to perform a day-by-day duty supposedly. A variety of studies have been carried out to determine the causes associated with stress and burnout in teachers. Studies from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States have found similar causes of burnout in professional educators (Coulter & Abney, 2009). There are a number of studies have been done dealing the burnout issue including many variables that may affect on the level of burnout among teacher such age , gender, marital status, level of education, teaching level, and job satisfaction. The focus of this article is only on the gender and marital status. Besides large volume of studies about the etiology of stress, there were also many studies on demographic data relating to stress. The most common variables for study are sex, teaching classes, marital status, teaching experiences, education, professional and religious backgrounds. These variables together with satisfaction with income were also examined in this study. In the studies of burnout among human service professionals including teachers by Maslach et al. (1996), results showed that female staff had higher emotional exhaustion than male colleagues. Mendes (2003) examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and teacher burnout on 49 credentialed secondary teachers and found that with more experience, teachers were better at identifying emotions. Lau et al. (2005) investigated the relationship between teachers demographic variables and burnout in Hong Kong using the C-MBI on 1797 respondents from 45 secondary schools. Gender differences were found in all three burnout syndromes, and teachers who were younger, unmarried, without religious beliefs, less experienced, without finishing professional training and of junior rank were more consistently burned-out. Whereas age was the strongest predictor for emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, teachers rank is the best predictor for personal accomplishment. In addition, Li et al. (2007) explored the relationship between teachers sense of teaching efficacy and job burnout by using the Teachers Sense of Teaching Efficacy Scale and the C-MBI which were administered to 247 secondary school teachers. Results indicated that teachers length of teaching and marital status have significant effects on their personal teaching efficacy, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment. However, there were also some inconsistent findings relating to relationship among the demographic variables and burnout. For instance, Holloman (1999) examined what personal and school-related variables were associated with 383 first-year school teacher burnout. No statically significant differences were found between areas of burnout and the variables of: gender, age and marital status. Likewise, the study by Zhao and Bi (2003) in a 3

sample of 190 secondary school teachers in Chinese Mainland showed that there was no difference between the genders in the three burnout syndromes. A meta-analysis conducted by Weng (2005) in 35 US research studies with K-12 teacher populations concluded that all of the variables of human characteristics included in the demographics of the selected studies did not have very strong predictive correlations with burnout. That means a single factor, such as gender, cannot be used to predict if a person would be more than others susceptible to three dimensions of burnout. There are no many studies dealing with this phenomena especially in Arabic world and the main purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of gender, marital status and baby sitter on levels of burnouts among English teacher in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the specific objectives of this paper are as following: 1. To identify the differences between gender and level of burnout on English teacher. 2. To determine the differences between marital status and level of burnout on English teacher. 3. To identify the differences between baby sitter and level of burnout on English teacher.

Method: Participant The population for this descriptive study was English teachers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A sample of the study was 50 Riyadh English teachers who employed at the primary, secondary school level or tertiary and in was contacted via e-mail with an invitation to participate anonymously in a single survey into beginning teacher wellbeing. All participants in the study were Saudi Arabia citizens who the majority of them (62%) holding a bachelors degree from university. Of the 50 English teachers who completed the inventory, all completed the inventory correctly. 17 of them were male and 33 people were female who 86.5 percent of the whole population was married and 63% of the married teachers don't have babysitter. The more than majority members of this group ranged in age from 25 to 40 years with a mean age of 33 years, and had been in the teaching profession for an average of 8 years. In this study, the 70 percent of English teachers were employed at secondary schools in the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Instrument Burnout in respondents was measured on one occasion using the Educator Survey version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996). The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the predominant instrument used to assess burnout in teachers 4

and educational administrators (Maslach, Jackson & Schwab, 1986). The MBI consists of 22 item self-report instrument that describing the feelings an individual might have as a result of being over-stressed or burned out; this instrument consisting of three subscales: Emotional Exhaustion (EE with nine items), Depersonalization (DP with five items), and Personal Accomplishment (PA with eight items). Participants respond on a seven-point frequency rating scale, and their numerical values are as follows: 0 = Never; 1 = A few times a year or less; 2 = Once a month or less; 3 = A few times a month; 4 = Once a week; to 5 = A few times a week; and 6 = Everyday. High scores on the EE and DP subscales and low scores on the PA subscale are characteristic of burnout. Feelings of low personal achievement can lead to burnout. Reliability coefficients for the Educator Survey version of the MBI have been reported by Pierce & Molloy (1990) as .89 for EE, .71 for DP, and .81 for PA for a large sample of Australian secondary school teachers (N=750). In the present study the

corresponding coefficient alpha scores were .87 for EE, .79 for DP, and .71 for PA. The demographics of the English teachers were provided by a demographic questionnaire representing the participant's age, gender, marital status, baby sitter and teacher experience. Data Analysis The data was collected by distributing the MBI questionnaire on the participants during February 2010. The researcher explained to the participants what this instrument is and how to fill the items properly. SPSS Statistics software version 16.0 was used to analyze the data which was interpreted according to the variables. Since the main purpose of the study was to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the gender, marital status and baby sitter and overall burnout level among English teachers, descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVA was performed on the data. To study the level of different burnout syndromes of the participants, the means and standard deviations of the three burnout syndromes were calculated. The mean scores for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment are 16.12 (SD=16.14), 4.46 (SD=6.43) and 33.64 (SD = 15.52), respectively. Dimension of burnout as displayed in following table are significantly high since the significant p .000 is less than 0.05 among all participants who are in the high level intervals.

Table.1. Statistics and one-sample t-test for burnout dimensions Burnout N Mean SD t df sig. 95% confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper 11.455 2.631 29.22 20.78 6.28 38.05

Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization Personal Accomplishment

50 50 50

16.12 4.46 33.64

16.14 6.43 15.52

6.94 4.90 15.31

49 49 49

.000 .000 .000

In order to determine whether gender, marital status and babysitter represent significant of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment, onesample t-test was employed. The obtained data as can be seen in following tables:

Table.2. The relationship between gender and the level of burnout among English teachers Personal Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization Accomplishment Gender N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD Male Female 17 33 5.23 21.72 8.31 16.80 17 33 .705 6.39 1.96 7.07 17 33 41.82 29.42 8.38 16.74

Table.3. The relationship between marital status and the level of burnout among English teachers Personal Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization Accomplishment Status N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD Married Single 44 6 16.34 15.2 17.38 6.49 44 6 4.75 2.8 6.73 3.27 44 6 33.409 33.3 16.03 12.54

Table.4. The relationship between babysitter and the level of burnout among married English teachers Personal Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization Accomplishment Answer N Mean SD N Mean SD N Mean SD Yes No 12 31 16.91 16.51 16.11 18.24 12 31 4.5 5.19 6.52 6.95 12 31 36.75 31.35 13.29 17.72 6

With reference to table 2, the mean of male teacher performance is decreased in two out of three subscales of burnout while the mean of this group is increased in personal accomplishment rather than females group. The one-way ANOVA procedure is employed to find out any significant difference between gender and level of burnout.

Table 5. The ANOVA results on the effects of gender on burnout dimensions

Source Emotional Exhaustion Between Groups Within Groups Depersonalization Between Groups Within Groups Personal Accomplishment Between Groups Within Groups Sum of Squares 3051.676 10145.604 363.012 34.696 1724.989 10092.531 df 1 48 1 48 1 48 Mean Square 3051.676 211.367 363.012 34.696 1724.989 210.261 F 14.438 Sig. .000

10.463

.002

8.204

.006

As displayed on the above tables, the results of the gender and levels of the burnout indicated that there is a significant effects for two groups of gender across three dimension levels of burnout (F =14.438, p< .05) (F =10.463, p< .05) (F =8.204, p<.05). At the same time, the same analytic tool is conducted on marital status and level of burnout. The results showed that teacher who are married have the same feeling with teacher who are singles. On the other hand, the Table 6, it displayed that there is no main effect of the married or single teacher performance and levels of burnout (F =.058, p> .05) (F =.646, p> .05) (F =.768, p> .05).

Table 6. The ANOVA results on the effects of marital status on burnout dimensions
Source Emotional Exhaustion Between Groups Within Groups Depersonalization Between Groups Within Groups Personal Accomplishment Between Groups Within Groups Sum of Squares 32.594 13164.686 37.370 1991.050 131.684 11685.836 df 2 47 2 47 2 47 Mean Square 16.297 280.100 18.685 42.363 65.842 248.683 F .058 Sig. .944

.441

.646

.265

.768

In order for the research to answer the research question related to babysitter, one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the obtained data as can be seen in following table:

Table 7. The ANOVA results on the effects of babysitter on burnout dimensions Sum of Mean Source df F Sig. Squares Square
Emotional Exhaustion Between Groups Within Groups Depersonalization Between Groups Within Groups Personal Accomplishment Between Groups Within Groups 80.621 13116.659 93.724 1934.969 438.459 11379.061 2 47 2 47 2 47 40.311 179.078 46.862 41.164 219.229 242.108 .144 .866

1.137

.329

.906

.411

Based on the above results, it is noticed that there is no significant difference between married teachers who have a babysitter or dont have on emotional exhaustion level, depersonalization and personal accomplishment levels. Discussion, Conclusion and Recommendation Male and female teachers represent the level of burnout and that perhaps because they have other responsibilities towards their families (children, husband and housework). In addition, perhaps because they care too much about their students and want everything perfect which stress them too much. The findings indicated that there is no a significant difference between male and female and these findings is supported by Coulter study in 2009, who also reported that there is no a significant difference between two genders and rate of burnout. Similarity, this paper is correlated to Comber (2007) research. Croon stated that gender doesnt effect on the level of burnout among teacher. Whereas, the finding in this study didn't support Capel (1992), Formanuik (1995) and Davis and Wilson (2000), who reported that the level of stress led to burnout among female teacher more than among male teachers, because male teachers seemed to experience less stress than did female teachers and also to have less teaching responsibilities. Similarity, the result didn't concurs with Byrne (1998), who emphasized that the causes leading to burnout affect male teachers more than the female teachers who have higher motivation. However, there was no significant difference between the males and females, in terms of their gender, on burnout levels.

The present study also showed that there is no significant difference between married and single teachers. This result supported Evans (2001) and Frank and McKenzie (1993), who reported that teachers gender did not have an effect on level of burnout. In terms of babysitter among married teacher who have babysitter and those teachers who didn't have babysitter, this study found that there is no significant difference between married teacher who have a babysitter or not. This result supported the view of Brunetti (2001) and Wong and Cheuk (1998), who maintained that married teachers who didn't have babysitter suffer of burnout more than teachers who have babysitter. Moreover, there were no significant differences on feelings of burnout among teachers who have babysitter or not. For further studies, it can be recommended to conduct training programs to see its effects on the level of burnout among teachers with different years of teaching experience or job satisfaction. Moreover, it is suggested that the burnout research can be carried out by a large sampling size including teachers who teach in other subjects or live in other cities, countries or for those teachers have children with and without babysitter to see whether this factor affects the results or not.

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