High School Professors’ Job Burnout and Their Professional Health

Abstract

Job burnout is an indicator of an psychosocial state of a teacher, and his psychosocial welfare is an indicator of University’s human capital state. In case of a higher educational institution the quality of its teaching staff determines the quality of its scientific and educational activity. The aim of the article is to investigate the signs of job burnout of professors in modern conditions as well as to discover the appropriate ways of its overcoming by means of an organization which structure is more flexible compared with public institutions. The questionnaire of the emotional exhaustion level diagnostics of V. V. Boiko has been chosen as the main diagnostic instrument. The research methodology has been complemented by the authors’ questionnaire to itemize organizational conditions and to obtain subjective evaluation of the system of factors which cause neuro-emotional stress of professors. The results analysis shows an escalation of the emotional exhaustion syndrome among professors of modern higher educational institutions. The traditional factors have been weighted down with stresses originated from the educational institution. The essential role in the occurrence of negative psycho-emotional states of teachers is performed by the organizational stress, which the administration is mainly responsible for. With the general systemic negative issues on the background the serious source of stress is organizational problems and changes in educational institutions. Systemic measures aiming at creation of an amiable psychosocial environment are expected to be the job burnout prevention and job burnout overcoming resource for professors. The creation of an internal social cultural space will mitigate the impacts of the external environment and allows to develop new plans of personal professional development for every teacher.