Burnout and Self-Actualization in Public School Teachers

Abstract

Public school teachers (N = 211) in six northwestern Ohio school districts completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), Shostrom's Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), and a brief, biographic questionnaire. The responses to the MBI produced the three factors previously named by Maslach as Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment. Each of the three scales correlated with the summed POI score (r = -.28, -.22, and .35, respectively) and produced high to moderate levels of internal consistency (alphas of .92, .85, and .88, respectively). Teachers with more students tended to produce higher scores on the Depersonalization scale.