The role of education is important in the present time, which changes fast. Especially, the role of a teacher that could be taken as the core of education has become more important, and the demanded capacity has gotten bigger. However, most of the pre...
The role of education is important in the present time, which changes fast. Especially, the role of a teacher that could be taken as the core of education has become more important, and the demanded capacity has gotten bigger. However, most of the present teachers are experiencing stress, and the danger of experiencing burnout to stress is getting higher. This research aims to verify the relationship between the method of solving social problem and burnout among variables that are significant to the burnout of elementary teachers, and to verify that if ego resilience mediates in the relationship between the method of solving social problem and burnout.
The research questions for achieving such research purpose are like the following.
First, what kinds of relationships are there among elementary school teacher’s social problem solving method, ego resilience, and teacher’s burnout?
Second, does ego resilience mediate in the relationship between elementary school teacher’s method of solving social problem and teacher’s burnout?
The research subjects were 203 elementary teachers from Incheon, Gyunggi-do Bucheon and Yangju, and some parts of Gangwon-do. The measuring tools were questionnaires SPSI-R, MBI, and CPI (translated by Hyun Jin Park). In order to examine the general characteristics of the research subjects, gender, work experience, size of the school, frequency of being the class teacher, percentage, and each variable’s average and standard deviation were calculated.
In order to discover the relationship among the subjects’ methods of solving social problem, ego resilience, and teacher’s burnout, correlation analysis was performed among the methods of solving social problem, ego resilience, and teacher’s burnout. To verify the mediation effect of ego resilience in the relationship between the method of solving social problem and teacher’s burnout, the verification procedure of the mediation effect that Baron and Kenny (1986) suggested was performed with the method of solving social problem, ego resilience, and teacher’s burnout as variables.
The summary of the research results is like the following.
First, the correlation analysis results of the method of solving social problem, ego resilience, and teacher's burnout were that positive problem intention and rational problem resolution had negative correlation with teacher's burnout, and negative problem intention, impulse, negligence, and avoidance had positive correlation with teacher’s burnout. Also ego resilience and teacher’s burnout had high level of negative correlation.
Second, after performing the verification procedure of mediation effect to find whether there was mediation effect of ego resilience or not, the result showed that ego resilience worked as prediction variable that is significant in the relationship between burnout and the five domains: positive problem intention, negative problem intention, rational problem solving, impulse-negligence, and avoidance. In other words, it partially mediated in the relationship between the method of social problem solving and teacher’s burnout.
This research has a meaning in that it verified the relationship between the method of solving social problem and ego resilience, and that it confirmed whether ego resilience mediated or not in the relationship between the method of solving social problem and burnout. Therefore, if intervention that could enhance constructive method of solving social problem and ego resilience were made, it would become more effective approach in improving teacher’s burnout.
Key words: the method of solving social problem, teacher’s burnout, ego resilience