Stress and burnout in physical education teachers: exploring the determinants

Factors that influence the professional condition of teachers can be grouped into three main areas: personality factors, occupational hazards and specific work environment conditions. Burnout has been identified as one type of chronic response to the cumulative, long term negative impact of work stressors. Based on Maslach’s research, some symptoms of the syndrome are commonly accepted: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and low personal accomplishment. Although teachers’ burnout has been the focus of many studies, only a few have dealt with PE teachers and no one has considered body attitudes as variables. This contribution presents the results of two studies carried out in the North East of Italy, involving 219 PE teachers who taught in secondary schools. A specific questionnaire, combined with the MBI (Maslach Burnout Inventory), was used. The questionnaire requested information about the subject’s personal background: demographic, educational and occupational data, working conditions, personal physical fitness perception, attitudes towards one’s own body and burnout level perception. About an half of the sample revealed medium or high level in three subscales of MBI; significant relationships were found between personal accomplishment and body attitudes.