Comparative Study on the Incidence of Burnout Syndrome in Teachers from Public and Privative Schools in Maringá, PR – Brazil

Abstract

Nowadays, the school has been considered a company and the teacher is just a worker that besides doing his pedagogic duties has to accomplish many other functions. This intensification of teachers’ obligations is causing them conflicts; their time to study and to get updated is too short. Burnout is the term used to designate a chronic feeling of discouragement, apathy and depersonalization that affects professionals of many areas, especially health and education. This syndrome is the result of emotional stress caused by the interaction with others. This present study aims to diagnose the presence, the causes, the incidences and the treatment of the Burnout Syndrome in professors of public and private schools. Therefore, descriptive procedures were used in a population composed by public and private schools teachers. Eighty two people were used in this study, of both genders. After the selection of teachers, a questionnaire developed by Maslach and Jackson (1981) was applied to identify the Burnout Syndrome. 18.29% among the 82 studied teachers presented symptoms of the syndrome and, in general, all the teachers presented some symptom of Burnout. Most of the professors that presented the symptoms of the syndrome may be considered young (31 to 40 age group) and had been teaching for a relative short time (9 to 16 years). In conclusion, younger professors and with short time of schoolteaching tend to develop the Burnout Syndrome. The cause of that can be due to the accumulation of tasks and also to the pressure they suffer in their work environment.