Teacher stress and burnout in deaf education.

Abstract

The retention of experienced and accomplished special education teachers is a growing concern that continues to be a problem within our nation's schools. Stress and burnout are an occupational hazard that affects many teachers, possibly leaving their profession. This study identified key factors, which are most troublesome stressors for teacher burnout in deaf education.

Introduction

One of the most distressing issues facing the field of education is teacher attrition. In particular, the retention of experienced and accomplished special education teachers is a growing concern that continues to be a problem within our nation's schools. An alarming rate of four out of every ten special educators leave the special education field before their fifth year of teaching (Wisniewski & Gargiulo, 1997). Farber and Miller (1981) noted that teachers who experience symptoms of burnout might:

* be less sympathetic with their students

* have low tolerance for frustration

* not plan often or carefully

* consider or plan to leave the profession all together

* report feelings of emotional or physical exhaustion on a frequent basis

* be depressed, irritable, anxious

* experience low levels of commitment and dedication to their work.

According to Wisniewski and Gargiulo (1997) special educators have been found to have higher attrition rates than general education teachers. Among newly hired special educators, yearly attrition rates average 10 percent each year for the first six years and 6 percent per year for the next 6 years. On average, special educators remain in the classroom for approximately 6 years (p. 327). Teachers working with children who are deaf or hard of hearing reflect similar concerns (Meadow, 1981, p. 13). Therefore, there is a pressing need to identify some of the causes and symptoms of stress for professionals working with deaf children in order to retain the most qualified and experienced ones.

Teacher Burnout

Although job prospects for special education teachers look promising, the principal problem in schools across the nation is teacher burnout that then leads to teacher attrition. Burnout occurs when the teacher is unsuccessful with attempts to cope with negative stressors. Teachers who experience burnout report having no out, no buffers, and no support system (Farber, 1984). Perceived levels of burnout are measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The MBI has been used in a wide variety of studies that examined burnout in general education, but few focused on special education (Byrne, 1994; Jackson, Schwab, & Schuler, 1986). According to Maslach and Jackson (1979) emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment are the most common stressors for teacher burnout. A study by Poche, Tassin, Oliver, & Fellows (2004) supports Maslach and Jackson's study stating that school-based speech pathologists experience that same symptoms as well as dealing with large caseloads of children.

One of the casualties of teacher burnout is that performance of high achieving students is less (Dworkin, 1997). Teachers who experience emotional exhaustion have a decrease in tolerance, tend to lose their temper with difficult students, and have difficulty motivating students. In addition, they have cognitive shortcomings and higher sickness and absence rates (Burke & Greenglass, 1995). In a study done by Dorman (2003), teachers who experience high levels of stress for a significant amount of time may develop burnout characteristics including:

* less sympathy towards students

* reduced tolerance of students

* failure to prepare lessons adequately

* lack of commitment to teaching.

Gersten, Keating, Yovanoff, and Hamiss (2001) conducted a survey of 887 special education teachers and found that an employer's awareness of increased job stress for new teachers and providing support to these teachers by principals or mentor teachers reduced stress and increased retention. Brownell, Smith, McNellis and Miller (1997) found that the largest portion of teachers leaving special education was due to dissatisfaction with working conditions and no administrative support.

An Evaluation of Teacher Burnout in Deaf Education

Bienenstock (1999) conducted a national study on teacher burnout in deaf education. Over 1000 responses were collected and found results to be the same as a 1981 study completed by Meadow, which revealed a unique set of stressors than its special and general education counterparts. Stressors that contributed to teacher burnout within deaf education included: (a) low levels of achievement attained by students, (b) feelings of guilt and anger by professionals working with deaf children created due to discrepancies between students' anticipated and actual educational achievement levels, and (c) communication. Larwood and Paje (2004) completed a study of burnout on a random sample of teachers working in deaf education. Although there are various programs that serve deaf students, this study examined stressors leading to burnout among full time teachers working in self-contained classrooms in deaf education within California. This study examined which key stressors contributed to burnout and attrition.

Method and Participants

Larwood and Paje (2004) conducted a descriptive evaluation study was to obtain information about the teachers (participants) and measure perceived levels of burnout through the use of a survey questionnaire. Participants included teachers (N==51) working in self-contained classrooms ranging from kindergarten through grade 12.

Instrumentation

A 43 question survey was used to collect participants' perceived levels of burnout. Existing studies focusing on teacher attrition and burnout guided the survey questions used in the study. The components of the survey included demographic information, stressors leading to burnout, and role conflict. A sample from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) (Maslach & Jackson, 1979) included three target areas are as follows: section one of the survey examined emotional exhaustion (e.g. "I find that I feel emotionally drained or burned out from my work most of the time", "I find that dealing with students who have complex problems is taking a toll on me"), section two examined depersonalization. This section looked at how the participants responded or avoided problems (e.g. "I avoid interactions with my administrators" , "I avoid participating in school events with my students"). Section three examined personal accomplishment. Some of the questions included: "I feel like I have not accomplished anything worthwhile on my job", " I feel like I am not getting enough support", I feel that administration is unsupportive".

Results and Discussion

Four types of personal demographic information were requested from participants: (a) sex, (b) hearing status, (c) age, and (d) marital status. Seventy five percent (n = 37) of the participants were female. Although no causal relationships were assessed to determine if females reported higher levels of burnout, this finding is supported by past literature that stated that more females than males work in the field of education. With respect to age, this study supported the finding that younger, less experienced, less highly educated special education teachers were at greater risk of experiencing burnout. In this study, over half of the participants in this study (n =31) were in the 36 65 year age range. A majority of the participants had 4 or more years of teaching experience. It may also be implied that these group of teachers would be considered survivors while more burned out teachers have left the field. Approximately half of the teachers who participated in this study taught at the high school level. This finding implies that a majority of the teachers who report perceived levels of burnout are those who teach at this level.

Identification of Stressors of Perceived Burnout

Emotional exhaustion. The findings indicated all participants were experiencing some level of emotional exhaustion. By far, paperwork was found to be the top stressor under this category. This finding is strongly supported in the majority of the literature. Paperwork was the primary problem because teachers had the added pressure of routine paperwork that the Individualized Education Plans (IEP) required. A possible solution to this dilemma would be to place bureaucratic tasks such as those mentioned previously to clerical support personnel. Another suggestion would be to make a standardized IEP template available to fill out on computers, cutting down some stress of filling it out by hand. Additionally, with the use of an IEP coordinator, much of the responsibility would be transferred from the teachers to the IEP coordinator or program administrator.

Lack of Administrative Support for Instructional Planning. Participants indicated that they felt time spent in meetings (staff, IEP, etc) was exhausting and as a result there was minimal time allotted for instructional planning. Prep times varied on a daily basis depending on the teacher's IEP schedule and grade level taught. Elementary teachers received 40 minutes of prep time a day. In contrast, teachers working at the middle and high school level were given 90 minutes to prepare for instruction daily. These findings present a discrepancy of prep time that is crucial, especially for beginning teachers. All participants were required to attend weekly staff meetings on top of other required meetings (e.g. curriculum planning). The implications of this finding suggest that teachers make a serious effort to be efficient in the brief periods of time they are given to prepare their lessons but are feeling less effective when the students they teach.

Job Demand. All participants agreed testing demands from the state of California were excessive. Deaf educators in the state of California are faced with more than one set of standards to comply with: state academic standards by the California Department of Education, standards set for by the California Department of Education Deaf Education Task Force in 2001,and standards set forth by the Council on the Education for Deaf and Hard of Hearing. The way in which a deaf students' scholastic aptitude is measured is through multiple choice questions which is the measure used to obtain data about how well the students are meeting the state standards This method of assessment does not fully assess the student's capacity to think. Teachers reported spending a significant amount of time preparing their students for these standardized tests, thus reducing the amount of time spent on the curriculum and basic skill building.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the results from this study indicated that emotional exhaustion, (specifically due to paperwork), dissatisfaction with administrative support and testing demands from the state of California were the three most troublesome stressors for teachers of the deaf. Burnout prevention strategies should aim at reducing teachers' levels of emotional exhaustion, specifically with reducing the amount of paperwork.

A large percentage of participants (80 percent) appeared to have positive, healthy relationships with others at work. Perhaps establishing collaborative teams at work would alleviate some stress of not feeling supported by program administrators as well as reduced instructional preparation time. Teachers must have adequate instructional planning and assessment time as well as meaningful professional development opportunities along with the support from their direct supervisors and colleagues in order to retain talented and dedicated teachers. As the literature review stated, the opposite of these suggestions has incurred an exodus from the profession of teaching.

Overall, participants in this study felt confident with what they do. All of them feel the pressure of helping their students meet the goals of their Individualized Educational Plan. The field of deaf education is large and the demand for more specialized teachers continues to grow. Administrators and experienced teachers must work together in identifying ways of maximizing support for new teachers as well as ensure that there is equity across the board for basic professional needs for planning, instruction and evaluation within the classroom. This study exclusively examined only a sample of areas of burnout. It would be noteworthy to further examine in more detail a larger sample of teachers looking closer at the causal relationships between the workplace, the administrators and the teachers themselves.

References

Brownell, M.T., Smith, S.W., McNellis, J.R., & Miller, M.D. (1997). Attrition in special education: Why teachers leave the classroom and where they go. Exceptionality, 7(3), 143 155.

Bienenstock, M. (1999). Teacher Burnout in Deaf Education: A National Study. An unpublished study presented at the Association of College Educators of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing National Conference, San Diego.

Burke, R.J., & Greenglass, E. (1995). A longitudinal study of psychological burnout in teachers. Human Relations, 48, 187 202.

Byrne, B.M. (1994). Burnout: Testing for validity, replication, and invariance of causal structure across elementary, intermediate, and secondary teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 31, 645 673.

Dorman, J. (2003). Testing a model for teacher burnout. Australian Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, 3, 3 5 47. P

Dworkin, A.G. (1997). Coping with reform: The intermix of teacher morale, teacher burnout, and teacher accountability. In Biddle, B.J., T.L. Good and I.F. Goodson (Eds.) International Handbook of Teachers and Teaching. London. Kluwer Academic Publications. 459 498.

Farber, B. (1984). Teacher burnout: Assumptions, myths, and issues. Teachers College Record, 86(2), 321 338.

Gersten, R., Keating, T., Yovanoff, P., & Harniss, M.K. (2001). Working in special education: Factors that enhance special educators' intent to stay. Exceptional Children, 67(4), 594 567.

Jackson, S.E., Schwab, R.L., Schuler, R.S. (1986). Toward an understanding of the burnout phenomenon. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71,630 640.

Larwood L., Paje, V..(2004) Evaluation of Teacher Burnout in Deaf Education. An unpublished study. San Jose State University, San Jose.

Maslach, C., & Jackson, SE (1979). The measurement of experienced burnout. Preprint,

Meadow, K.D. (198 1). Burnout in professionals working with deaf children. American Annals of the Deaf, 126(1), 13 22.

Poche', L., Tassin, J., Oliver, P., & Fellows, J. (2004). Job Stress in School Based Speech-Language Pathologists. Advance Magazine, Vol. 14, (16).

Wisniewski, L., Gargiulo, R.M. (1997). Occupational stress and burnout among special educators: A review of the literature. The Journal of Special Education, 31,325346.

Lou Larwood is an assistant professor of special education specializing in deaf education. Vanessa Paje is a High School English teacher in Fremont, California.