1.THE EFFECT OF GENDER, MARITAL STATUS AND BABY SITTER ON BURNOUT OF ENGLISH TEACHER IN SAUDI ARABIA Azadeh Asgari (Corresponding author)C-3-22, Selatan Perdana, Taman Serdang perdana, Seri KembanganSerdang, PO box 43300, Selangor, MalaysiaTel: 6-017-350-7194 E-mail: Azia.Asgari@gmail.comAbstract:Teacher burnout is a world-wide phenomenon that draws the attention of educationalpsychologists and stimulates efforts in construct elaboration and measurement. Emotionalexhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishments are three dimensionsthat constitute the burnout syndrome. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectof gender, marital status and babysitter on burnout of teacher among 50 English teachers inRiyadh, Saudi Arabia. This paper is described the quantitative data. All participants of thestudy were Saudi Arabia citizens who were worked in Riyadh. For determining the level ofburnout experienced by English teachers Maslach Burnout Inventory test (MBI) wasconducted.Consequently, based upon the findings, an English teachers gender seems toinfluence teachers responses on each of the sub-scales of the Maslach Burnout Inventory sothere was significant difference between the gender and burnout, whereas the study foundthat there were no significant differences between the marital status and babysitter of theEnglish teacher scores on the MBI.Keyword: Gender, Marital status, Babysitter, Burnout, English TeacherIntroduction:Much of the research in the area of burnout can be traced to Herbert Freudenberger, apsychologist practicing in New York during the 1960s and 70s, who used the term todescribe the effects of overwork, exhaustion and frustration he experienced while operating afree clinic for drug users and indigent persons. This concept was first introduced byFreudenberger in 1974. In 1974, Freudenberger defined the problem as one of chronicexhaustion and frustration resulting from continued devotion to a goal or principle that hasfailed to produce a corresponding reward. It was defined as wearing down or wearing out of

2. energy (Freudenberger & North, 1985). Some other views can be added to Freudenbergersto give a meaning the concept of burnout. According to Pines and Anderson (1988) burnoutis formally defined and subjectively experienced as a state of physical, emotional, andmental exhaustion caused by long-term involvement in situation that are emotionallydemanding. The term burnout originated during the 1960s as a description of the effect ofdrug abuse on an individual (Golembiewski, 1993 as cited in Landeche, 2009).Maslach is one of the pioneers in the study of teacher burnout which was as asyndrome of physical and emotional exhaustion involving the development of negative jobattitudes, poor professional self-concept, and loss of empathus concern for client (Maslach &Pines, 1984). Maslach (1981) defined burnout as a condition characterized by emotionalexhaustion, depersonalization and loss of a sense of personal accomplishment. Thiscondition evolves primarily in individuals who work in human services occupations such aseducation, social work, police and emergency services. Burnout is manifested in thefollowing ways: work overload, lack of control over ones work environment, lack ofcommunity among teachers in the school, lack of fairness in work assignments and theuneven distribution or absence of rewards (Maslach, 1981). Emotional ExhaustionDepersonalizationPersonal AccomplishmentFigure 1. The Dimensions of Burnout (Sedgwick, 1998)Emotional Exhaustion indicates the feelings of over extension and exhaustion causedby daily work pressures, and conflicts with the colleagues. Depersonalization refers to thedevelopments of negative attitude and impersonal responses towards the people with whomone works. Personal Accomplishment means the sense of personal achievement,accompanied by self-esteem. It is inversely related with burnout.Burnout can be a fundamental cause of an endless list of bad side-effects, not only onthe person who suffer from this syndrome but also all will the people around him/her beaffected (Landeche, 2009). As mentioned earlier that a teacher is the main component of 2 3. teaching process, so that when the teacher has this syndrome, this will make him/ her treat thestudents irrespectively and he/ she will not be able to perform a day-by-day duty supposedly.A variety of studies have been carried out to determine the causes associated withstress and burnout in teachers. Studies from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, theNetherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States have found similar causes ofburnout in professional educators (Coulter & Abney, 2009). There are a number of studieshave been done dealing the burnout issue including many variables that may affect on thelevel of burnout among teacher such age , gender, marital status, level of education, teachinglevel, and job satisfaction. The focus of this article is only on the gender and marital status.Besides large volume of studies about the etiology of stress, there were also manystudies on demographic data relating to stress. The most common variables for study are sex,teaching classes, marital status, teaching experiences, education, professional and religiousbackgrounds. These variables together with satisfaction with income were also examined inthis study. In the studies of burnout among human service professionals including teachersby Maslach et al. (1996), results showed that female staff had higher emotional exhaustionthan male colleagues. Mendes (2003) examined the relationship between emotionalintelligence and teacher burnout on 49 credentialed secondary teachers and found that withmore experience, teachers were better at identifying emotions. Lau et al. (2005) investigatedthe relationship between teachers demographic variables and burnout in Hong Kong usingthe C-MBI on 1797 respondents from 45 secondary schools.Gender differences were found in all three burnout syndromes, and teachers who wereyounger, unmarried, without religious beliefs, less experienced, without finishingprofessional training and of junior rank were more consistently burned-out. Whereas age wasthe strongest predictor for emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, teachers rank is thebest predictor for personal accomplishment. In addition, Li et al. (2007) explored therelationship between teachers sense of teaching efficacy and job burnout by using theTeachers Sense of Teaching Efficacy Scale and the C-MBI which were administered to 247secondary school teachers. Results indicated that teachers length of teaching and maritalstatus have significant effects on their personal teaching efficacy, depersonalization andreduced personal accomplishment.However, there were also some inconsistent findings relating to relationship amongthe demographic variables and burnout. For instance, Holloman (1999) examined whatpersonal and school-related variables were associated with 383 first-year school teacherburnout. No statically significant differences were found between areas of burnout and thevariables of: gender, age and marital status. Likewise, the study by Zhao and Bi (2003) in a 3 4. sample of 190 secondary school teachers in Chinese Mainland showed that there was nodifference between the genders in the three burnout syndromes. A meta-analysis conductedby Weng (2005) in 35 US research studies with K-12 teacher populations concluded that allof the variables of human characteristics included in the demographics of the selected studiesdid not have very strong predictive correlations with burnout. That means a single factor,such as gender, cannot be used to predict if a person would be more than others susceptibleto three dimensions of burnout.There are no many studies dealing with this phenomena especially in Arabic world andthe main purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of gender, marital status andbaby sitter on levels of burnouts among English teacher in Saudi Arabia. In addition, thespecific objectives of this paper are as following: 1. To identify the differences between gender and level of burnout on English teacher. 2. To determine the differences between marital status and level of burnout on English teacher. 3. To identify the differences between baby sitter and level of burnout on English teacher.Method:ParticipantThe population for this descriptive study was English teachers in Riyadh, SaudiArabia. A sample of the study was 50 Riyadh English teachers who employed at the primary,secondary school level or tertiary and in was contacted via e-mail with an invitation toparticipate anonymously in a single survey into beginning teacher wellbeing. All participantsin the study were Saudi Arabia citizens who the majority of them (62%) holding a bachelorsdegree from university. Of the 50 English teachers who completed the inventory, allcompleted the inventory correctly. 17 of them were male and 33 people were female who86.5 percent of the whole population was married and 63% of the married teachers donthave babysitter. The more than majority members of this group ranged in age from 25 to 40years with a mean age of 33 years, and had been in the teaching profession for an average of8 years. In this study, the 70 percent of English teachers were employed at secondary schoolsin the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.InstrumentBurnout in respondents was measured on one occasion using the Educator Surveyversion of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996). The MaslachBurnout Inventory (MBI) is the predominant instrument used to assess burnout in teachers 4 5. and educational administrators (Maslach, Jackson & Schwab, 1986). The MBI consists of 22item self-report instrument that describing the feelings an individual might have as a result ofbeing over-stressed or burned out; this instrument consisting of three subscales: EmotionalExhaustion (EE with nine items), Depersonalization (DP with five items), and PersonalAccomplishment (PA with eight items). Participants respond on a seven-point frequencyrating scale, and their numerical values are as follows: 0 = Never; 1 = A few times a year orless; 2 = Once a month or less; 3 = A few times a month; 4 = Once a week; to 5 = A fewtimes a week; and 6 = Everyday. High scores on the EE and DP subscales and low scores onthe PA subscale are characteristic of burnout. Feelings of low personal achievement can leadto burnout. Reliability coefficients for the Educator Survey version of the MBI have beenreported by Pierce & Molloy (1990) as .89 for EE, .71 for DP, and .81 for PA for a largesample of Australian secondary school teachers (N=750). In the present study thecorresponding coefficient alpha scores were .87 for EE, .79 for DP, and .71 for PA.The demographics of the English teachers were provided by a demographicquestionnaire representing the participants age, gender, marital status, baby sitter andteacher experience.Data AnalysisThe data was collected by distributing the MBI questionnaire on the participantsduring February 2010. The researcher explained to the participants what this instrument isand how to fill the items properly.SPSS Statistics software version 16.0 was used to analyze the data which wasinterpreted according to the variables. Since the main purpose of the study was to determinewhether there was a statistically significant difference between the gender, marital status andbaby sitter and overall burnout level among English teachers, descriptive statistics, t-test andANOVA was performed on the data.To study the level of different burnout syndromes of the participants, the means andstandard deviations of the three burnout syndromes were calculated. The mean scores foremotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment are 16.12 (SD=16.14),4.46 (SD=6.43) and 33.64 (SD = 15.52), respectively. Dimension of burnout as displayed infollowing table are significantly high since the significant p .000 is less than 0.05 among allparticipants who are in the high level intervals.5 6. Table.1. Statistics and one-sample t-test for burnout dimensions95% confidenceBurnout N Mean SDt dfsig.Interval of the DifferenceLowerUpperEmotional Exhaustion5016.12 16.146.9449.00011.455 20.78Depersonalization 504.466.43 4.9049.0002.6316.28Personal Accomplishment 5033.64 15.5215.31 49.00029.2238.05 In order to determine whether gender, marital status and babysitter representsignificant of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment, one-sample t-test was employed. The obtained data as can be seen in following tables:Table.2. The relationship between gender and the level of burnout among English teachersPersonal Emotional ExhaustionDepersonalizationAccomplishmentGenderNMean SDNMeanSD NMeanSDMale 17 5.23 8.31 17.705 1.96 1741.828.38Female 3321.72 16.80336.39 7.07 3329.4216.74Table.3. The relationship between marital status and the level of burnout among English teachersPersonalEmotional ExhaustionDepersonalizationAccomplishmentStatus NMeanSDNMeanSDN MeanSDMarried 44 16.34 17.3844 4.756.73 44 33.409 16.03Single6 15.2 6.4962.83.27 6 33.312.54Table.4. The relationship between babysitter and the level of burnout among married English teachersPersonal Emotional ExhaustionDepersonalizationAccomplishmentAnswerN MeanSD N MeanSDN MeanSDYes 1216.9116.11 12 4.5 6.521236.75 13.29No3116.5118.24 31 5.196.953131.35 17.726 7. With reference to table 2, the mean of male teacher performance is decreased in twoout of three subscales of burnout while the mean of this group is increased in personalaccomplishment rather than females group. The one-way ANOVA procedure is employed tofind out any significant difference between gender and level of burnout.Table 5. The ANOVA results on the effects of gender on burnout dimensionsSum of Mean Source dfFSig.SquaresSquare Emotional ExhaustionBetween Groups3051.67613051.676 14.438 .000Within Groups 10145.604 48 211.367 DepersonalizationBetween Groups363.012 1363.01210.463 .002Within Groups 34.69648 34.696 Personal AccomplishmentBetween Groups1724.98911724.989 8.204.006Within Groups 10092.531 48 210.261As displayed on the above tables, the results of the gender and levels of the burnoutindicated that there is a significant effects for two groups of gender across three dimensionlevels of burnout (F =14.438, p< .05) (F =10.463, p< .05) (F =8.204, p .05) (F =.646, p>.05) (F =.768, p> .05).Table 6. The ANOVA results on the effects of marital status on burnout dimensionsSum of Mean Source dfFSig.SquaresSquare Emotional ExhaustionBetween Groups32.594216.297 .058 .944Within Groups 13164.686 47 280.100 DepersonalizationBetween Groups37.370218.685 .441 .646Within Groups 1991.05047 42.363 Personal AccomplishmentBetween Groups131.684 265.842 .265 .768Within Groups 11685.836 47 248.683 7 8. In order for the research to answer the research question related to babysitter,one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the obtained data as can be seen in followingtable:Table 7. The ANOVA results on the effects of babysitter on burnout dimensions Sum of Mean Source df FSig. SquaresSquare Emotional ExhaustionBetween Groups80.6212 40.311 .144 .866Within Groups 13116.659 47179.078 DepersonalizationBetween Groups93.7242 46.862 1.137.329Within Groups 1934.9694741.164 Personal AccomplishmentBetween Groups438.459 2 219.229.906 .411Within Groups 11379.061 47242.108 Based on the above results, it is noticed that there is no significant difference betweenmarried teachers who have a babysitter or dont have on emotional exhaustion level,depersonalization and personal accomplishment levels.Discussion, Conclusion and Recommendation Male and female teachers represent the level of burnout and that perhaps because theyhave other responsibilities towards their families (children, husband and housework). Inaddition, perhaps because they care too much about their students and want everythingperfect which stress them too much. The findings indicated that there is no a significantdifference between male and female and these findings is supported by Coulter study in2009, who also reported that there is no a significant difference between two genders and rateof burnout. Similarity, this paper is correlated to Comber (2007) research. Croon stated thatgender doesnt effect on the level of burnout among teacher. Whereas, the finding in thisstudy didnt support Capel (1992), Formanuik (1995) and Davis and Wilson (2000), whoreported that the level of stress led to burnout among female teacher more than among maleteachers, because male teachers seemed to experience less stress than did female teachers andalso to have less teaching responsibilities. Similarity, the result didnt concurs with Byrne(1998), who emphasized that the causes leading to burnout affect male teachers more than thefemale teachers who have higher motivation. However, there was no significant differencebetween the males and females, in terms of their gender, on burnout levels.8 9. The present study also showed that there is no significant difference between marriedand single teachers. This result supported Evans (2001) and Frank and McKenzie (1993),who reported that teachers gender did not have an effect on level of burnout. In terms of babysitter among married teacher who have babysitter and those teacherswho didnt have babysitter, this study found that there is no significant difference betweenmarried teacher who have a babysitter or not. This result supported the view of Brunetti(2001) and Wong and Cheuk (1998), who maintained that married teachers who didnt havebabysitter suffer of burnout more than teachers who have babysitter. Moreover, there were nosignificant differences on feelings of burnout among teachers who have babysitter or not. 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