PRIVATE COURSE TEACHERS' BURNOUT AND JOB SATISFACTION

Abstract

Problem and Purpose: The influence of private courses that mainly focus on preparing students and high school graduates for university entrance examination by offering courses in several subjects, increasing their abilities in tests in the educational system has been increasing. Although there are several studies investigating job satisfaction and burn out of teachers who work in state schools, studies about job satisfaction and burn out of teachers who work in private courses seem to be limited. The main objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between burnout and job satisfaction of private course teachers. "Maslach Burnout Inventoryâ€? was used to asses burnout level, and "the Minnesota Job Satisfaction Scaleâ€? was used to asses job satisfaction. Independent variables of the study were gender, branch of study, teaching experience, number of teachers in a private course institution, school of graduation, and work-load per week. Method: The universe of the study was consisted of the teachers (N=480) who work in 34 private courses located in the province of Malatya City municipal. The study was carried out with 257 private course teachers selected randomly. The main limitation of this study is about the sample. The data was gathered from private course teachers in Malatya city center. Nationwide studies are needed to generalize the findings. Therefore, qualitative studies may help to identify the factors that contribute insensitivity of the teachers. Results: Analyses indicated that burnout levels of the subjects on all subscales of burnout inventory were found to be low. Findings about job satisfaction showed that overall job satisfaction level of the participants was just above neutral level. There was also a negative and medium relationship between burnout levels and job satisfaction of the teachers. Analyses yielded no significant differences among both burnout and job satisfaction scores of the participants with regard to gender, branch of study, school of graduation variables. However, there was a significant difference among the participants' job satisfaction levels and insensitivity scores in terms of teaching experience. Therefore, insensitivity scores of the subjects differed significantly with regard to number of teachers in a private course and work-load per week variables. Recommendations: Results indicated that insensitivity scores of the private course teachers were found to be high regarding some variables. It seems vital to take preventive actions to ease the influence of the factors contributing to insensitivity. Therefore, job satisfaction of the teachers was just above “neutralâ€? level. This finding in fact poses a problem for private courses the institutions of competitive market conditions, because it is seems very hard to keep on operating in the long run with teachers who do not get much job satisfaction. Thus, some actions have to be taken to improve job satisfaction of private course teachers. Keywords: Teacher, Private course teachers, Burnout, Job satisfaction