The opinions on the education of students with disabilities as the predictors of teacher burnout

Abstract

Although there is no strong confirmation of the direct link between teachers’ attitudes towards and opinions on inclusion and teaching outcomes, they do predict the undesirable manifestations, such as teacher burnout. The aim of this paper was to determine the extent to which teachers’ opinions on the education of students with different disabilities predict burnout, over and above the basic personality traits. In order to measure teachers’ opinions, the MSK questionnaire was constructed. Personality characteristics were measured by the Big Five Inventory, and burnout was measured by the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory. The sample consisted of 645 primary school teachers from the Republic of Srpska. Using exploratory factor analysis, two MSK factors (60.87% variance) were obtained: (1) the feasibility of teaching the students with psychological difficulties, and (2) the feasibility of teaching the students with sensorimotor difficulties. The factors explained a small amount of variance of burnout. However, the first factor showed significant incremental predictability for burnout, in addition to personality traits, which suggests a small but significant contribution of the opinions on the education of students with disabilities to understanding the teacher burnout syndrome in the context of inclusion. At the same time, the results imply that, from the point of view of potential prevention, the knowledge of teachers’ personality is probably much more important than their opinions on this topic.

Keywords

• attitudes towards and opinions on inclusion
• education of students with disabilities
• teacher burnout
• exploratory factor analysis