Research on Hungarian Female Teachers' Mental Hygiene State With Special Regard to the Development of their Professional and Female Identity

Abstract

We worked with the fact that, nowadays, the majority of teachers in schools are female, so the aim of our research became to assess the general state of mental hygiene in female teachers, and its causal relations. In this study we presented the may-sided, diversified roots of the research, based on positive, Jungian and personal psychology, educational researches on teachers personality, gender issues in education. We also exhibited the connected studies on stress and burn out mostly in connection to teachers and the field of education. The research has a specific focus on female teachers' mental hygiene states in connection with their developing professional and female identity. We pointed out some connections of our main points of examination and the Finnish teacher training practice, too. As a main hypothesis we presume that just a certain group of female teachers are in a state of fragile mental hygiene. In the detailed hypotheses we are looking for evidence that the mental hygiene state shows differences between certain groups among female teachers. The best way for examination appeared to be by using two validated (MBI-ES, LOT-R) and two personal creating questionnaires (BÉIK, SzSzK, only in Hungarian), as a comparative survey. On the whole, our starting assumption has been proved, that female teachers' mental hygiene state in our meaning the level of burnout and psychological well-being are in connection with the level of the elaboration of their professional and female identity.