The relation between the exposure to mobbing and burnout levels of secondary school teachers

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the relation between the level of burnout and the level of exposure to mobbing. The research is in relational survey model. The population of the research is composed of 1153 secondary school teachers working in Siirt city center in 2014-2015 academic year.As the number of teachers included in the research population is not high, sampling was not madeand 354 of the distributed scales were analysed. In the study, “Negative Acts Questionnaire†Scale developed by Einarsen and Raknes (1997) was used to measure the frequency of teachers’ exposure to mobbing behaviours. To determine the teachers’ burnout levels“Maslach Burnout Inventory†(MBI- Educators Survey) developed by Maslach and Jackson (1981) was used. The results showed that teachers are exposed to negative behavioursunder the sub-dimensions of “work related mobbing†and “mobbing directed at social relations†at "occasional" level. With regard to the burnout levels of the secondary school teachers, the highest value is observed in “emotional exhaustion†sub-dimension while the lowest is in “depersonalization"; and the personal accomplishment is at moderate level. As a result of the research, basedon the perceptions of the teachers, a positive and medium levelof relation was determined between the “work related mobbing†and “mobbing directed at social relations†sub-dimensions of mobbing and “emotional exhaustion†and “depersonalization" sub-dimensions of  burnout, while the relation with  the personal accomplishment  dimension was at a negative and medium level. As a result of the regression analysis, it was found out that both sub-dimensions of mobbing significantly predict all the dimensions of burnout subscales.

Keywords: Mobbing, burnout, secondary school, teacher