A Comparison of Work-related Attitudes of TESOL Members with Other Educators and Employee Groups: An

International Survey Using The Maslach Burnout inventory Martha C. Pennington and Belinda Ho

Introduction How do TESOL members feel about their chosen line of work? Are people who work in TESOL

basically satisfied with their employment or do they suffer from job stress and burnout? How does

their level of satisfaction compare to that of other educators and employee groups? These are questions which are of considerable interest to TESOL members, to the institutions that employ them, and to the organization as a whole.

This paper reports on a survey using the Maslach Burnout Inventoy [MBI] which is part of a continuing line of research investigating the work-related attitudes of TESOL members. First, the previous research on TESOL members and their employment concerns is reviewed. Next, the burnout syndrome is discussed in terms of its general characteristics and the effects it has on individuals and employee groups, with particular reference to teachers. Then, the research conducted on TESOL members to discover their degree of burnout is summarized and analyzed in relation to the demographic characteristics of the sample. Finally, the results of the burnout research are compared to the results of the previous studies, and some tentative observations are made in relation to TESOL members.

Previous Resesarch on Job-Related Attitudes of TESOL Members The published literature on teachers’ attitudes towards their work (e.g., as summarized in Pennington, 1991a,b,c,d) indicates that, in general, teachers register moderate or high job satisfaction in categories having to do with the nature of teaching work and its intrinsic values, while registering low job satisfaction in categories having to do with pay and particularly with opportunities for advancement. Thus, teachers are generally satisfied with the intrinsic rewards of teaching but not with its extrinsic rewards.

Within TESOL, the Blaber and Tobash (1989) report of the TESOL Employment Concerns Survey indicated a high level of concern among ESL practitioners about pay, benefits, and professional status. These concernswere confirmed by the results of two small-scale studies (Pennington &Riley, 1991a,b) that surveyed TESOL members about their job satisfaction, finding a general pattern of employment attitudes consistent with those of teachers in other fields.

In the first of these studies (Pennington & Riley, 1991a), which employed the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire [MSQ], the average satisfaction score of respondents was 65.7 (out of a possible 100 points). This score was interpreted as indicating a moderate degree of overall job satisfaction for the TESOL members - mainly teachers - who responded to the survey. The average scores in the MSQ individual response categories of Advancement opportunities and Compensation, at less than half the maximum score, were the lowest of the twenty included on the survey instrument. This result was

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interpreted to mean that the TESOL respondents were least satisfied in the areas of opportunities for advancement and pay. As judged by the highest average MSQ scores, job aspects that the TESOL members found most satisfying were in the categories of Moral values (i.e., being able to do things which do not go against one’s conscience) and Social service (i.e., the opportunity to perform a social service in one’s work). In general, the survey respondents indicated that iithey were most satisfied with those aspects of their work which represent its intrinsic rewards.

In the second of these studies (Pennington & Riley, 1991b), which employed the Job Descriptive Index [JDI], the surveyed TESOL members - again, mainly teachers - averaged an overall satisfaction score of 43.5 (out of a possible 54 points). This score was interpreted to represent a high degree of general job satisfaction among those who responded to the second survey. As in the earlier survey, respondents indicated least satisfaction with opportunities for advancement (the Promotions scale of the JDI) and with the compensation for their work (JDI Pay scale), with average scores in each of these categories falling well below the midpoint. In contrast, average scores were well above the midpoint in the JDI categories for Co- Workers (i.e., the people the respondent interacts with on the job), Work (i.e., the nature of the work in which the respondent is engaged), and Supervision (i.e., oversight on the job), suggesting moderate or high job satisfaction in these aspects of employment.

Teacher Burnout Burnout is a syndrome that afflicts people who work in “helping professions” or other client-centered fields. Burnout results from a form of chronic stress associated with the frequent interactions and close contact with others that is required’ in “people work.” Those suffering from burnout feel emotionally drained: “as emotional resources are depleted, workers feel they are no longer able to give of themselves at a psychological level” (Maslach & Jackson, 1986: 1). Thus, they suffer from emotional exhaustion. “When these feelings become chronic, teachers find that they can no longer give of themselves to students as they once could” (Schwab, 1986: 18).

Burned out workers also suffer from depersonalization. Depersonalization refers to “negative, cynical attitudes and feelings about one’s clients..., [a] callous or even dehumanized perception of others” (Maslach & Jackson, 1986: 1). In Schwab’s (1986: 18-19) characterization:

Teachers who no longer have positive feelings about their students are experiencing the second component of teacher burnout, Depersonalization. Among the many ways teachers can display indifferent, negative attituaes towards their students are: using derogatory labels (for example, they are animals'); exhibiting cold or fitant attitudes; physically distancing themselves from students (for example, barn&ding themselves behind their desk); and 'tuning out' students through psychological withdrawal.

Finally, in the burnout syndrome, according to Maslach and Jackson (1986: 1): “Workers may feel unhappy about themselves and dissatisfied with their accomplishments on the job.” They therefore suffer from a reduced sense of personal accomplishment According to Schwab (1986: 19):

The third aspect, a feeling of low Personal Accomplishmentfiom the job, isparticularly crucial for teachers. Most teachers enter the profession to help students learn and grow. When teachers no longerfeel that they are accomplishing this, there are few other areas on which they can focus to receive rewards (for example, putting in more time to make more money).

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Previous research on burnout among teachers and others whoworkin human services (e.g., Maslach, 1982; Maslach &Jackson, 1982,1984,1986) has indicated that burnout may have serious effects on the personal as well as the organizational level. For the individual, these include deteriorating performance on the job, job dissatisfaction, and physical and psychological effects related to insomnia, substance abuse, and family and marital problems. For the organization, the negative effects of burnout include, in addition to the cumulative effects of employees’ poor performance, absenteeism, high turnover, and low staff morale.

Other research (Gold, 1985; Maslach & Jackson, 1985; Pines, 1983; Russell et al., 1987; Schwab & Iwanicki, 1982a,b; Schwab et al., 1986) has shown that the effects of potentially stressful aspects of employment that may result in burnout are mitigated by factors such as the clarity with which the employee’s job-related role and responsibilities are defined, the amount of support received from colleagues and others, and the individual’s background characteristics and employment level. Teachers experiencing less role ambiguity and strong social support are better able to cope with stress and to diffuse its long-term effects such as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a low sense of personal accomplishment. In terms of these three burnout symptoms, it has been found that female teachers experience less depersonalization towards students than male teachers, older teachers suffer less from emotional exhaustion than younger ones, and elementary teachers have higher levels of personal accomplishment and less depersonalized feelings towards students than secondary teachers (Schwab, 1986). In addition, the normed samples given in the Madach Burnout Inventory Manual (Maslach & Jackso% 1986, p. 9) indicate less emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, coupled with higher personal accomplishment for tertiary teachers than for those teaching at K-12 level. Related research has shown that public school teachers in the U.S. (Menlo et al., 1990) and Canada (Ball & Stenlund, 1990) experience high job satisfaction as compared to those in some other countries such as England (Poppleton & Riseborough, 1990), West Germany (Lissman & Gigerich, 1990), and Japan (Ninomiya & Okato, 1990).

The MBI Study Purpose The present research was undertaken to supplement and extend the results of previous research on job satisfaction and professional concerns in ESL by carrying out a survey of TESOL members using the MB1 Educators’ survey form. The MB1 provides a way of assessing TESOL members’ feelings about their employment in terms of the burnout syndrome.

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Survey Instrument As described by Maslach and Jackson (1986), the MBI is a psychological measurement instrument designed to assess the three aspects of the burnout syndrome that have been identified in the literature on work-related attitudes in human services fields: EmotionaZ Exhaustion, Depersonaliztion, and lack of Personal Accomplishment. Each of these aspects has been developed as a subscale of the MBI. A high degree of burnout is reflected in high scores on the first two of these scales and in low scores on the last one.

The MB1 consists of 22 statements of feelings that potentially apply to those working in human services. Examples of the statements are the following:

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Sample Emotional Exhaustion statement: I feel emotionally drained from my work.

Sample Depersonalization statement: I feel I treat students as if they were impersonal objects.

Sample Personal Accomplishment statement: I feel I’m positively influencing other people’s lives through my work.

The respondent replies to each statement by assessing how often s/he experiences the feeling described, on a scale from “0 = Never“ to “6 = Every day”. A slight modification to the MBI form and scoring procedures has made it possible to develop a special Educators’ form that focuses specifically on burnout in the teaching profession.

Both forms of the MBI are simple to fill out and take only 10-15 minutes to complete. Both have been favorably analyzed in terms of their reliability and validity (Bodden, 1985; Dowd, 1985; Maslach & Jackson, 1986, ch. 2). They have both been widely used, and the published literature on results of the survey implementations is relatively large (see Maslach & Jackson, 1986, for bibliography). For both the Educators’ and the general form of the MBI, published norms exist for comparison with newly surveyed populations. For all these reasons, the Educators’ form of the MBI seems to be an appropriate form to gather data to supplement what is already available on job-related attitudes of TESOL members. *

Mailing Procedure and Response The MBI Educators’ form was mailed to a random sampling of 300 TESOL members, extracted from the organization’s computerized mailing list. Included in the envelope was the survey form, a letter explaining the general purpose of the survey1 and requesting the respondent’s participation in the survey, a demographic data sheet, and a pre-addressed return envelope. Of the 106 survey forms returned, eleven were unusuable. Two survey forms were returned unmarked by people who indicated that theywere retired; one was returnedunopened, marked ’undeliverable address.” Eight others could not be scored because of missing data or items marked “yes,” "yes," "?," "or “N/A”2. Thus, the survey results are based on the 95 responses, 31.67% of those mailed, which contained completed questionnaires.

Subjects Characteristics of subjects are given in Table 1 (next page). As can be seen from the table, half of the group of respondents (except for the 5 cases where subjects did not indicate their age) was under 44 and half was 44 or over. The mean age of 43 is 1 to 2 points higher than in the Pennington and Riley (1991a,b) research. The 76.9% response from females is also somewhat higher than the proportion of females in those earlier studies. Nevertheless, the figures in the categories of age and sex are not far off those of the previous two studies, indicating that they surveyed roughly comparable populations. The 81.1% figure for responses coming the U.S.- which includes two Canadian reponses - is comparable to the response in the Pennington and Riley (1991a,b) surveys and representative of the TESOL membership. The figures for highest degree, field of study, and employment status for the present study are comparable to those of the combined Pennington and

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Table 1: Demographic Information on Subjects

CATEGORIES

Age

Sex

Country

Region

Highest Degree

Educational

up to 43 over 43

Male Female

us Foreign

Western US Central US Eastern US Asia Others

Bachelor Masters Doctorate

ESL Educ./Lang. Other

TOTAL (N = 95) FREQUENCY MISSING CASES

45 50%’ 5 45 50%

21 23.1% 4 70 76.9%

77 81.1% 0 18 18.9%

25 26.3% 0 29 30.5% 26 27.4% 8 8.4% 7 7.4%

12 13.0% 3 61 66.3% 19 20.7%

42 45.7% 3 47 51.1%

a 3 3.3%

Employment Status Part-time 27 29.3% 3 Full-time 56 60.9% Both 9 9.8%

Institution Non-academic 3 33% 3 K-12 18 19.8% Ad.Ed./Jr.Col. 22 24.2% 4 yr./Intensive Prog. 48 52.7%

Job title Non-teaching L level academic M level academic H level academic

25 27.2% 3 8 8.7% 43 46.7% 16 17.4%

Years in ESL l-9 43 46.7% 3 10-19 31 33.7% 20-37 18 19.6%

Under $20,000 $2o,ooo-40,ooo Over !§40,000

29 33.3% 8 39 44.8% 19 21.8%

Work Hours o-4 10 10.9% 3 5-8 39 42.4% Over 8 43 46.7%

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Riley (1991a,b) survey results, as reported in Pennington (1991a), and to those of the TESOL Employment Concerns survey (Blaber & Tobash, 1989).

The proportion of the MBI respondents indicating an affiliation with a 4-year college/university or private intensive language institute, at 52.7% is high when compared to percentages for responses in the 4-year category - ranging from 31%-44% - in any of the other three studies. Thus, the subjects in the present study suggest a higher proportion of academics working at 4-year colleges/universities or intensive language institutes than in the previous studies but are in other respects similar in demographic characteristics to the samples of TESOL members surveyed in other recent research.

Although comparable data are not yet available, it is worth noting that over 17% of respondents hold high-level academic titles, i.e., Principal Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Full Professor, while nearly half (46.7%) hold mid-level academic titles such as Instructor or Teacher, with a few in the lower category of titles such as Assistant Teacher or Tutor. In addition, over one- fourth of the respondents (27.2%) hold non-academic titles such as Coordinator or Director. It is also worth noting that the median score for number of years on the job in the surveyed group is above 10 and the salary for two-thirds of the respondents at $20,000 or higher, with over 20% above $40,000. At the same time, fully one-third of the surveyed group - most but not all of them part-time - indicate a salary of under $20,000. The last point to note is that nearly 50% of those surveyed say that it takes them over 8 hours on an average work day to accomplish all the tasks, including preparation and homework, connected to their jobs.

Findings Survey results were scored according to the procedures described in the Maslach Bumout Inventory manual (Maslach & Jackson, 1986), using the special scoring key, and then input to a computer for analysis with the SPSS software. Descriptive statistics were computed for each of the three scales, Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Pmonal Accomplirhment, so that these scores could be compared to the norms for educators and other employee groups in the MBI Manual. The scores can be compared by inspecting Table 2 (p.35).

As compared to the overall figures for the other 11,067 employees surveyed by Maslach and Jackson (1986), the TESOL group is slightly lower on the Emotional Exhaustion subscale, considerably lower on the Depersonalization subscale, and considerably higher on the Personal Accomplishment subscale. The TESOL group therefore seems to suffer less from the stress-related effects associated with burnout than does the general population of human services workers.

When compared to the individual occupational subgroups, the TESOL group scores somewhat lower on Emotional Exhaustion than the K-12 teachers, social services workers, doctors and nurses, and other group (which includes lawyers, police officers, and librarians, ministers and other categories of employees not covered in the other subgroups), while scoring somewhat higher on Emotional Exhaustion than the post-secondary educator group and considerably higher than the mental health worker group of counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. In the category of Depersonalization, the TESOL group had the lowest score of all the groups surveyed, even somewhat lower than the post-secondary educators group and considerably lower than the K-12

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Table 2: Comparison of Mean (M) and Standard Deviation (SD) for TESOL Group (Present Study) and Otha Occupational Subgroups (Maslach & Jackson, 1986~9) on Subscales of the M&v&h wmroert Inventory

MBI SU&KALES

TESOL Group

AU Other Employee Groups

K-12 Teachers

M SD

M SD

M SD

EMOTIONAL DEPERSONALIZATION PERSONAL EXHAUSTXON ACCOMPLISHMENT

19.46 5.10 38.66 11.31 4.62 5.52

20.99 8.73 34.58 10.75 5.89 7.11

21.25 11.00 35.54 11.01 6.19 6.89

Tertiary Teachers M 18.57 5.57 39.17 SD 11.95 6.63 7.92

Social Services Workers M 21.35 7.46 32.75 SD 10.51 5.11 7.71

Doctors & Nurses M 22.19 7.12 36.53 SD a 9.53 5.22 7.34

Counselors, M 16.89 5.72 30.87 Psychologists, & SD 8.90 4.62 6.37 Psychiatrists

Other (e.g. Attorneys, Police, Ministers)

M 21.42 8.11 36.43 SD 11.05 6.15 7.00

group, which has the highest score in this category of all employee groups, according to the Maslach and Jackson (1986) data. In the category of Personal Accomplishment, the TESOL group scored somewhat lower than the post-secondary educators group. Otherwise, their Personal Accomplishment score was considerably higher than that of all the other employee subgroups provided in the Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual (Maslach & Jackson, 1986) for comparison.

On the whole, the mean scores of the TESOL group are closest to those of the post-secondary educators group. This stands to reason, considering that the TESOL group draws heavily on educators working at post-secondary level.

These results should be interpreted with caution, considering the special nature of the sample, which is mainly from U.S. respondents over 30 years of age - generally, well over that age - holding post- graduate qualifications and working at post-secondary level. It is likely that a very different result might obtain if TESOL members outside the U.S. or K-12 teachers were the focus of the study, or if non-members were surveyed.

Conclusion The results of the present survey of TESOL members using the MBI do not indicate the presence of the burnout syndrome, as defined by high emotional exhaustion and depersonalized attitudes towards students, accompanied by a low sense of personal accomplishment. In fact, they indicate that TESOL’members, at least as judged by those who responded to this survey, experience less Depersonalization and a greater sense of Personal Accomplishment from their work than others in human services professions. As one TESOL respondent to the MBI survey, a part-time teacher, put it:

I love my job! I'm happier in this job than I've ever been and I taught junior high school for 16 years then worked as a manager in business for 14 years.

In the context of the survey results obtained previously with TESOL members, the current results confirm a moderate-to-high degree of satisfaction with intrinsic aspects of the work such as relationships with others and feelings of worth and accomplishment that come with fulfillment of job responsibilities. The results of the MSQ, JDI, and MBI surveys taken together suggest that, for many TESOL members, the intrinsic rewards and positive social relations of the job may mitigate the potentially stressful aspects of ESL work and compensate to some degree for the inadequate career structure and financial rewards which many perceive as existing in the field.

Acknowledgement This paper was presented at the TESOL annual conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia, on March 6, 1992. The cost of the survey was underwritten by TESOL, in the form of a grant sponsored by the Intensive English Programs Interest Section. We wish to thank TESOL Special Grants committee for its support and the Central Office for its assistance in generating the mailing labels for the survey.

Notes 1. The purpose was described as surveying job-related attitudes. To ensure against any pre-biassing of

responses, no mention of “burnout” was made.

2. Most of the answers marked “N/A” were statements related to the Depersonalization scale, which assesses the respondent’s relationships with students, and most of the “N/A” responses came from respondents who were not in fact teachers - e.g., a course developer for a telecommunications company, an employee of a state department of education, and two administrators. Some of those who marked “yes” or “""?” for some statements may have been uncomfortable with the scale alternatives, as one respondent remarked, “It’s difficult to judge some of these areas,” and another observed in relation to a particular statement that “a freqeuncy scale is wrong for this vague statement.” A third respondent, who left many of the items blank made the following comment:

Most of these statements are inappropriately phrased if the response has to be in terms of frequencies per year/mo/week/&y. They seem to mix frequency of occurrence of events with feelings about events in odd ways.

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