The Role of the School Principal in Burnout and Job Satisfaction of Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

The aim of this research is the identification of the role of the school principals in burnout and job satisfaction of Greek teachers that are working in both primary and secondary education. The aim was covered through quantitative research with a structured and online distributed questionnaire used as the main research tool. The research participants are 155 schoolteachers coming from primary and secondary Greek school units. They were collected by using convenience sampling and avalanche method. For the distribution of the questionnaire, the Google Forms platform was used and for the statistical analysis we used SPSS (version 23). The main research results showed that transactional and transformational leadership are more implemented in Greek schools, than laissez-faire leadership style. Teachers’ levels of job burnout are positively affected by laissez-faire leadership and negatively affected by the two positive leadership styles. On the contrary, transformational, and transactional leadership has positive impact on job satisfaction levels and negative impact on teachers’ burnout. School principals should place emphasis on maintaining the transformational leadership style, which emerged as the dominant one, due to the fact that it leads to increased levels of job satisfaction and the reduction of teachers’ burnout. Also, attention should be paid to the case of female teachers, who were found to be more vulnerable to burnout.