Educator Burnout and Compassion Fatigue: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Sixty-four Canadian educators from Southwestern Ontario took part in a 2-hr voluntary workshop about the emotional labor and consequences that may be experienced by educators. A focus on both burnout and teacher compassion fatigue (CF), an underresearched area with respect to Canadian educators, was taken. The current study hypothesized that this professional development would positively influence educators’ knowledge, skills, and awareness regarding burnout, CF, and self-care; furthermore, it was predicted there would be a positive correlation between burnout and CF. Results supported the efficacy of professional development and partial support was detected for the relationship between burnout and CF. Implications and future research are discussed.

Keywords

educators burnout compassion fatigue professional development

Teachers are challenged with the task of successfully undertaking many roles and responsibilities in their everyday work, including being a motivator, manager, counselor (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 1996), school leader, resource provider, mentor to fellow teachers, an active agent of change for themselves and their students (Harrison & Killion, 2007), and most importantly, educate the future leaders of tomorrow (Murphy, Delli, & Edwards, 2004). It is not surprising, then, that Johnson et al. (2005) found teaching to be one of the most stressful professions, with levels of stress similar to those experienced by paramedics, police officers, and social service workers. In addition, two distinct wellness concepts have been linked to compromised emotional and physical well-being in teachers, namely, burnout (Burke & Greenglass, 1995) and compassion fatigue (CF; Hatcher, Bride, Oh, King, & Catrett, 2011). With scant research on CF among teachers (Borntrager et al., 2012), this article begins to fill the gap with a review of the relevant research literature and offers a theoretical framework as one way to develop an understanding of teacher burnout and CF. We present a description and evaluation of a professional development workshop for teachers on these topics, and discuss the results in the context of the overarching goal of improving teacher well-being, enhancing the quality of professional education, and adding to the research literature.

Teacher Roles and Challenges

The current focus of education is to consider the learner’s needs and adapt teaching styles to meet them, as compared with more universal methods (Okojie, 2011). This differentiated instruction approach requires teachers to have the resources and autonomy to meet the individual needs of students; however, in Ontario, the Education Quality Improvement Act (EQIA) was adopted in 1997 and has since restricted the autonomy of teachers and involved many changes to the Ontario public education system, including reallocating the control of educational decision making from elected school board officials to government, implementation of new curricula, and mandating the amount of time teachers must spend in direct instruction (Jaafar, Freeman, Spencer, & Earl, 2005). Valli and Buese (2007) observed that broad educational reform can lead to high levels of stress in teachers, along with unanticipated (and negative) consequences within student–teacher relationships. In addition, Jaafar and colleagues (2005) found reform negatively impacted educators’ emotional well-being when too much reform was implemented too quickly.

In the wake of the changes, the Ontario College of Teachers reported that teachers felt most stressed over job aspects such as time constraints, encountering dysfunctional families, performance evaluations, and school politics; furthermore, 58% of teachers reported feeling stressed “all the time” and “a few times a week,” compared with only 36% of the general working public (COMPAS, 2006, p. 10).

A recent survey conducted with more than 8,000 Canadian educators revealed 79% felt their stress levels had increased over the last 5 years due to work–life imbalance, and as many as 85% felt this imbalance was negatively affecting their ability to teach. Significant stressors educators identified were lack of sufficient time to plan classes, support students, grade, as well as the time involved in developing and implementing Individualized Education Programs for increasing numbers of students with additional learning requirements (Froese-Germain, 2014). Insufficient resources from the school, school board, and ministry, as well as continuous curriculum change were also highlighted by more than 80% of respondents as causing them stress (Canadian Teachers’ Federation, 2014). Moreover, more than half of the respondents with more than 5 years teaching experience noted feeling a decrease in autonomy in their job and felt that if more autonomy to perform their job was given, it would positively impact their work–life balance and personal well-being (Froese-Germain, 2014).

Taken together with retention research indicating that 14% of educators leave the profession within the first year of teaching, and nearly 50% leave within their first 5 years (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2004), there is evidence that educators can experience negative emotional impacts from their work. Labeled as one of the most stressful professions (Johnson et al., 2005), the added demands that teachers must take on, alongside their regular duties, are linked to mental health issues and job dissatisfaction (Chan, 2006). Also characterized as a feeling of a lack of personal accomplishment, this unhappiness with one’s job is a key concept in the phenomena known as burnout (Maslach & Jackson, 1981).

Burnout is described as a long-term chronic state of stress which is the direct result of working with people (Schwarzer & Hallum, 2008). The Maslach Burnout Inventory—Educators Survey (MBI-ES) was created specifically to measure teacher burnout (Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach, & Jackson, 1996) and defines burnout as made up of three independent components, namely, (a) emotional exhaustion—feelings of depletion and a lack of energy which negatively impacts a person’s ability to demonstrate care and concern with the population they work with, (b) lack of personal accomplishment—individual feels they cannot adequately relate to their target group, and (c) depersonalization—individual experiences a sense of detachment and a lack of sympathy toward people (Maslach, Jackson, & Schwab, 1996).

It is critically important that we address teacher wellness for the sake of their students, as well. Recent research by Arens and Morin (2016) with 380 teachers and nearly 8,000 students demonstrated a direct and negative relationship between teachers’ level of emotional exhaustion and students’ grades, standardized test scores, school satisfaction, and perception of teacher support.

Burnout and Teachers

Teachers’ job factors, including managing student behavior, workload, time constraints, teaching demands, and poor working conditions have all been negatively associated with personal accomplishment (Kokkinos, 2007). Research has demonstrated that stress, low job satisfaction, and lack of coping skills were predictors of burnout, while burnout, years of work experience, and job satisfaction were related to high stress scores (Fisher, 2011).

Fernet, Guay, Senécal, and Austin (2012) found a large sample of Canadian educators were negatively impacted psychologically when they felt environmental demands within the school system were threatening their self-determination and efficacy within the classroom. The researchers also found interpersonal factors, like the relationship between teachers and students or teachers and their principals, were influential in educator burnout scores. Burnout has also been associated with lower job satisfaction, somatic symptoms, lower life satisfaction, higher medication use, and absenteeism (Burke & Greenglass, 1995).

Evidence also suggests those who leave the profession tend to have lower scores on variables such as pro-social values, self-efficacy, and commitment, and higher emotional exhaustion and depersonalization scores compared with those who stay (Hong, 2010). Moreover, longitudinal repeated measures research conducted over a 1-year period found that work stress, conflict and ambiguity in the job, and unmet expectations of what teachers believed the job would be like were all related to burnout at both Time 1 and Time 2.

CF

Unlike burnout, which typically develops over months or years, CF can occur after one encounter (Pryce, Shackelford, & Pryce, 2007) and describes the natural emotional and behavioral reactions stemming from exposure to someone close who is experiencing a traumatic event, combined with the stress caused by the desire to help the traumatized individual. Individuals suffering from CF often exhibit symptoms similar to diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Figley, 1999). Symptoms shared by both CF and PTSD include the following: re-experiencing the trauma through dreams, recollections, and/or flashbacks; avoiding or numbing reminders of the trauma through detachment from others, psychogenic amnesia, and diminished affect; and heightened/persistent arousal evident by difficulty sleeping, becoming irritable, or being hypervigilant (Figley, 1999).

CF and Teachers

In comparison with the development of the concept of burnout and teachers, there is limited published research involving teaching populations and CF (Borntrager et al., 2012). Most of the literature investigates CF among other human service sector employees; however, a recent study by Borntrager and colleagues (2012) was the first to quantitatively investigate CF among school personnel in the Northwestern United States and found that approximately 75% were experiencing high levels of CF, according to the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS)—which measures the severity of the PTSD-like symptoms outlined above. Hatcher et al. (2011) investigated CF among juvenile justice teachers, and results indicated 81.4% of the teachers met one or more of the three primary diagnostic requirements for PTSD, 55.1% met two, and 39.0% met all three. Although the researchers point out that these results must be interpreted with some caution, as the high trauma rates among children involved in the justice system could have influenced the level of CF experienced by their teachers, it is also important to note that such exposure may not be out of the ordinary; Canadian statistics indicate that up to 30% of children experience physical abuse, and 14%, sexual abuse in their lifetime (MacMillan, Tanaka, Duku, Vaillancourt, & Boyle, 2013), and 50% of Canadian adults indicate they have experienced at least one traumatic event (Van Ameringen, Mancini, Patterson, & Boyle, 2008).

Extending the interpretation of this research that demonstrates many Canadian teachers will then be exposed to children who have experienced some trauma, the finding that a large Canadian survey reports that 62% of teachers felt stress related to having to deal with student health and personal issues takes on particular importance (Canadian Teachers’ Federation, 2014). As CF can develop through the stress of wanting, but not being able, to help individuals in distress (Figley, 1999), this could suggest that educators may be more at risk of developing CF.

Qualitative research has also explored experiences of CF with teachers. Hoffman, Palladino, and Barnett (2007) uncovered themes of loss of control, empathy, and responsibility, and Hill (2011) tracked how teachers coped with CF symptoms of intrusive images, and feeling fatigued and overwhelmed by using self-care techniques.

Taken together, the existing research demonstrates that both burnout and CF can have a negative impact on teachers, and both are associated with distress (Hill, 2011; Kokkinos, 2007); furthermore, and as demonstrated in the burnout literature, these teacher impacts can negatively impact both student motivation and attitude toward learning (Zhang & Sapp, 2008). Before examining the literature on how professional development may mitigate the impact of burnout and CF, theoretical perspectives of how and why these negative experiences may develop are presented.

Teacher Performance-Motivation Theory and Relational-Cultural Theory

Two theoretical perspectives that have promise for explaining the impact burnout and CF can have on teachers and the importance and function of the teacher/student relationship are Teacher Performance-Motivation Theory (Blase, 1982) and Relational-Cultural Theory (Jordan, 2000).

Teacher Performance-Motivation Theory posits there is a mutual and active relationship between students and teachers and that to understand the components of a teacher’s job, it is essential that the teacher/student relationship be understood (Blase, 1982). From the Relational-Cultural Theory perspective, it would be desirable that the “mutual and active relationship” be a growth-fostering relationship (where people are free to be authentic and create healthy connections) as it is viewed as an essential component in life where both parties grow through the relationship; furthermore, mutual empathy and empowerment are key in development (Jordan, 2000).

According to Teacher Performance-Motivation Theory, teachers in the student/teacher relationship have a perception of students’ learning needs and apply effort, as well as coping resources, to help students achieve desired outcomes (e.g., good grades). The theory views the development of burnout as arising from a set of circumstances where a teacher’s efforts and coping resources are unable to surmount work-related stressors such that factors in their job (not enough time to meet all student needs, for example) overwhelm their resources both prevent them from accomplishing their perceived job (i.e., academic, ethical, and guidance goals) and inhibit them from attaining intrinsic (e.g., personal fulfillment) or extrinsic rewards (e.g., bonuses). If this unmet demand for available resources continues for a long period of time, work involvement, motivation, effort, and satisfaction decrease, because of teachers’ global appraisal of their “ineffective performance with students” (p. 99). The degree to which teachers feel ineffective depends on their perceptions and expectations about their efforts and the resultant student outcome. The larger the perceived discrepancy, the more stress and eventual burnout teachers experience (Blase, 1982).

Hoffman et al.’s (2007) study highlights the importance of this application of theory with their finding that teachers suffering from CF felt inadequate in their ability to control their work environment in a way which enabled them to effectively meet the needs of their students; thus, teacher performance-motivation theory offers a way to conceptualize the process of both burnout and CF, and to understand the impact students have on their teachers.

Applying Relational-Cultural Theory (Jordan, 2010) to the notion of this perceived discrepancy may provide not only an explanation of the phenomena but an idea regarding what interventions might be helpful: teachers who perceive their work stressors as insurmountable, and who then are experiencing burnout and/or CF, may not be able to empathetically engage with and empower their students, nor be open to empathy or empowerment from their students or their colleagues. The lack of mutual relational benefit would then result in a teacher–student relationship that does not provide any experience of authentic connection, maintaining the teacher’s perceived coping/stressor discrepancy and sense of isolation.

Professional Development

Important to note across many of the studies relating to burnout and CF is that professional development appears to be a means of addressing, not preventing, these debilitating ways of being (see Hatcher et al., 2011; Hill, 2011; Hoffman et al., 2007; Hong, 2010; Kokkinos, 2007). Inherent in professional development is the opportunity for knowledge to facilitate change. This was demonstrated by Cooley and Yovanoff (1996), who found teachers equally benefited from a stress-management workshop and a peer collaboration program, compared with a control group. The value of such experiences are endorsed by those who have participated in them: Pryce et al. (2007) found more than 88% of their child welfare worker participants of professional development workshops on burnout, CF, and Vicarious Trauma (VT; which develops more gradually and changes one’s cognitive schemas about the world, self, and beliefs; Pearlmann & Mac Ian, 1995) reported they would incorporate this into their work and believed it was worthwhile attending.

The professional development needs and experiences of teachers may be different from those of other helping professions. Cunningham et al. (2014) highlighted in their research with more than 1,000 educators that teachers prefer professional development to be in small-group workshops lead by engaging experts with relevant experience who teach applicable skills to use with students. Research reported by Hydon, Wong, Langley, Stein, and Kataoka (2015) describes the efficacy of a brief intervention designed to address secondary traumatic stress and burnout in teachers and conclude that normalizing these experiences, providing opportunities for peer support through group learning, and recognizing and understanding the need for self-care are critically important for teachers.

The Current Study

The current study focuses on one professional development workshop (see the Appendix for further details) on the topics of burnout, CF, and self-care were selected to be discussed with educators (i.e., broadly defined as those who work with children in the school system); only burnout and CF were investigated by the current study. The workshop content was developed and conducted in collaboration with teachers and professional development coordinators at a local school board, facilitated using active experiential learning concepts (Kolb, Boyatzis & Mainemelis, 2000). The evaluation was designed and conducted by the authors. Because CF’s impact on educators is a relatively new subject area and no Canadian research has been uncovered, only a limited amount of literature has been published on how it affects them, so this was seen to be a unique contribution to the literature—especially because the present sample involved Canadian educators.

The study investigated the short-term benefits of a single professional development workshop on burnout and CF in relation to educators’ knowledge, skills, and awareness of burnout and CF along with its prevalence within this population. The specific hypotheses included the following:

Hypothesis 1: Educators would report an increase in knowledge and understanding of CF and burnout as well as an increase in awareness of, and efficacy in the use of, self-care skills immediately after the workshop compared with the preevaluation.

Hypothesis 2: Individuals with higher burnout scores would also have higher CF scores, based on the findings of Pryce et al. (2007).

Method

Ethics approval was received for this study from the University Research Ethics Board.

Participants

Educators from a large school board in Southwestern Ontario (see Table 1 for Role Frequency) participated in the study. The voluntary professional development workshop took place about midway through the school year, was funded by the local school board, and was advertised on the school board website. At the time of the workshop, there was a significant labor action by teachers, and they were not attending or supervising any extracurricular events at their schools at the direction of their federation.

Table 1.

Role Frequencies of Sample.

Role	Frequency	Sample percentage
Teacher	38	54.8
Educational assistant	10	15.6
School administrator	6	9.4
SS—Unspecified	1	1.6
SS—Psychology	3	4.7
SS—Social work	2	3.1
Other	4	6.3
Missing	3	4.7

Note. SS = support staff; psychology = psychologists, psychometrists, psych-associates; social work = social workers, social service workers.

The workshop was 1 hr and 40 min in length and took place at the head office of the school board. Pretest (Time 1) and posttest (Time 2) questionnaires were completed individually but in a group setting with up to six participants at each table, before and after the workshop. Of the 74 workshop attendees, 64 (58 female, 2 male, 2 unspecified) completed the Time 1 and Time 2 questionnaires. Years of experience ranged from less than 1 year to 36 years (M = 14.77, SD = 9.79), and 31 participants indicated working in an elementary school setting, 19 secondary, 12 in both (see Table 1).

Measures

MBI-ES

The MBI-ES is a 22-item burnout survey where items are scored on a 7-point Likert-type scale from 0 (never) to 6 (every day) (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996). There are four subscales: Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Burnout (where a high score indicates low levels of wellness) and Personal Accomplishment (where a high score indicates high levels of positive appraisal). The minimum possible score on all subscales is 0, with a maximum possible sum score of 54 of emotional exhaustion (nine items), 30 on depersonalization (five items), and 48 (eight items) on personal accomplishment. Normative data compiled by Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter (1996) provide a determination of where an individual sits on a continuum (i.e., low, average, high on a particular component). Reliability coefficients are .90 for the emotional exhaustion subscale, .79 for depersonalization, and .71 for personal accomplishment (n = 1,316; Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996).

For the purposes of this study, slight wording changes were made to three items on the depersonalization scale (with permission of the copyright holder) in response to concerns from the professional development coordinators at the school board who thought they were phrased too harshly. Researchers have found these items did not load on the depersonalization factor (Abu-Hilal & Salameh, 1992) and participants reacted negatively to these particular items (Kristensen, Borritz, Villadsen, & Christensen, 2005), so the modifications were implemented. The changes to three of the five items for the depersonalization subscale may have influenced internal consistency/reliability, which was calculated to be slightly higher (α = .69) than that reported by Kantas and Vassilaki (1997), but lower than Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter (1996).

STSS

The STSS is a 17-item measure of the three primary symptom clusters of CF, namely, intrusion (Cronbach’s α = .79), arousal (.87), and avoidance (.85; Bride, Robinson, Yegidis, & Figley, 2004). Internal consistency reliability for the total measure was good, at .94. Items are scored on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 (never) to 5 (very often) with an overall minimum possible score of 17 and a maximum of 85. Higher scores indicate higher CF, with scores of 38 or above warranting clinical intervention, and are categorized along a continuum which consists of 5 levels: no CF, mild, moderate, high, and severe CF (Bride, Radey, & Figley, 2007).

Data were analyzed by using the overall score of participants on the STSS versus their individual subscale scores; even though confirmatory factor analyses indicated support for the three subscales of the STSS, where factor loadings ranged from .46 to .82, the three factors were highly correlated with each other ranging from .96 to 1.0, suggesting CF may in fact be a single construct (Ting, Jacobson, Sanders, Bride, & Harrington, 2005).

Researcher’s Questionnaire (RQ)

A 22-item questionnaire was created to investigate educator knowledge and awareness of burnout, VT, CF, coping skills, and resources available to educational staff in the community and through the school board. Items were divided into three subscales labeled knowledge and understanding, awareness, and skills and behavior. A total of 15 items fell under the knowledge and understanding subscale and its Cronbach’s alpha score was .90 indicating high reliability of the subscale; one item fell under awareness, and a reliability score was not calculated as the subscale only involved one item; and six items fell under skills and behavior and its Cronbach’s alpha score was .65 indicating moderate reliability of the subscale. All subscales were completed before, and immediately following, the professional development workshop.

The 6-point Likert-type scale ranged from 0 (not relevant to my daily work) to 5 (urgent attention required). A minimum possible score on each subscale was then 0 with a maximum possible score of 75 on knowledge and behavior, 5 on awareness, and 30 on skills and behavior. High numbers indicated more need for development within that area, while lower numbers indicated less need for development.

Procedure

At the beginning of the workshop, participants were given a package containing the questionnaires, letter of information, and written consent and asked, if they consented, to complete the Time 1 evaluation (MBI-ES and RQ). Participants were also asked, “Within the last year, and within your work environment, have you observed a student or co-worker who has experienced a trauma?” If participants responded “yes” to the question they were asked to answer the STSS at Time 1, as well. Following this, the 1 hr and 40 min workshop began. Once the workshop was over, participants were asked to complete the Time 2 evaluation which took approximately 5 min to complete and only consisted of the RQ.

Analysis

Recognizing the potential challenges of missing data in a repeated measures design, data were inspected to determine the unit and item-level missing responses (e.g., Tabachnick & Fidell, 2012). A set of criteria was developed for participants to be systematically included in the analyses. The criteria were as follows:

Participants who were missing more than 20% of responses on a particular measure were excluded from the analyses of that measure.

Participants who had less than 20% of responses missing on a particular measure, but were missing greater than 20% of responses on a particular subscale within a measure, were included in the analyses but excluded when analyzing that particular subscale. If a participant met the two criteria conditions, their missing data points were filled with an average score calculated with the participant’s existing subscale scores on the measure missing a response. This was performed with eight participants on the RQ, four at Time 1, six at Time 2; four on the MBI-ES at Time 1; and four on the STSS at Time 1.

Results

RQ

For knowledge and understanding, significant differences occurred between Time 1 and Time 2, t(59) = 10.29, p < .001, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [9.6, 14.2]. For awareness, significant differences were noted between Time 1 and Time 2, t(59) = 7.82, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.9, 1.5]. Finally, for skills and behavior, significant differences were also noted between Time 1 and Time 2, t(59) = 10.37, p < .001, 95% CI = [4.5, 6.6]. Please see Table 2 for detailed information.

Table 2.

RQ: Means and Standard Deviations.

Variable	Time 1		Time 2
Variable	M	SD	M	SD
Knowledge	45.67	9.47	33.77	10.26
Awareness	3.30	0.91	2.12	0.85
Skills and behavior	19.23	3.36	13.66	4.20

Note. RQ = Researcher’s Questionnaire.

Burnout and CF

Cronbach’s alpha scores were calculated to compare reliability estimates between the original measures and the modified measures used in the current study. MBI-ES subscale scores ranged from .70 to .91, while the STSS alpha score was .95, thus reliability of the modified scales were assumed.

A Pearson’s correlation was used to examine the relationship between total STSS scores and scores based on the subscales of the MBI-ES. Results indicated a significant relationship between emotional exhaustion and total STSS scores, depersonalization and total STSS scores, but not between personal accomplishment and total STSS scores (see Table 3 for STSS’ relation to MBI-ES subscales).

Table 3.

Correlations: STSS and MBI-ES Subscales (N = 44).

Measure	1	2	3	4
1. EE	1.00	—	—	—
2. DP	.66**	1.00	—	—
3. PA	−.054	−0.14	1.00	—
4. STSS	.64**	0.54**	−0.14	1.00

Note. STSS = Secondary Traumatic Stress; MBI-ES = Maslach Burnout Inventory—Educator Survey; EE = Emotional exhaustion; DP = Depersonalization; PA = Personal accomplishment.

p < .01, two-tailed.

Although no hypotheses were made regarding frequency rates of the different MBI-ES subscales or STSS, it was deemed important to examine how many educators were experiencing burnout (see Table 4 for Frequency of MBI-ES scores) and CF (see Table 5 for Severity of CF scores at Time 1).

Table 4.

Frequency of MBI-ES Scores.

Subscales	Range of experienced burnout
Subscales	n	Low	Average	High
Time 1
Emotional Exhaustion	59	13	22	24
Depersonalization	58	34	15	9
Personal Accomplishment	58	33	18	7

Note. MBI-ES = Maslach Burnout Inventory—Educator Survey.

Table 5.

Severity of CF.

Time	N	Range of experienced CF
Time	N	Little to no CF	Mild	Moderate	High	Severe
1	44	8	17	10	3	6

Note. CF = compassion fatigue.

Discussion

The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the immediate efficacy of a professional development workshop for educators on the concepts of burnout, VT, CF, and self-care. Such interventions are important not only for the health and well-being of teachers, but because research has demonstrated when teachers are experiencing emotional exhaustion, there is a direct effect on students’ grades and standardized achievement scores, school satisfaction, and perceptions of teacher support (Arens & Morin, 2016). Support was found for our first hypothesis, that people reported more knowledge and less need for development in the areas of interest after, as compared to before, the workshop. Results indicated only partial support for the prediction that there would be significant positive relationships between CF and burnout in which emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were associated, but no inverse relationship was found between CF scores and personal accomplishment scores.

The Relationship Between Burnout and CF

Significant relationships between the burnout subscales of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization with CF were detected, but not between personal accomplishment and CF.

The discrepancy between the concept definitions and measurements of burnout between the current study and Pryce et al. (2007) could account for why personal accomplishment was not associated with CF; alternatively, it could be that people could be experiencing CF in their work, while maintaining a sense of accomplishment. The notion of discrepancies between concept definitions and measurements of the concepts moderating the relationship between burnout and CF was supported by Cieslak et al.’s (2014) meta-analysis where researchers discovered that effect sizes of the relationship between burnout and CF were moderated by not only the type of measurements used to measure STSS and burnout but also the theoretical frameworks used to conceptualize the concepts as well. Those studies that used measures which conceptualized CF similar to that of Pryce et al.’s choice of assessment reported a stronger association with burnout than did measures which focused on PTSD-like symptoms, as the STSS does.

What was apparent through the present research was the strong relationships between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization with CF where similarities between the symptom descriptions of the two correlated subscales of the MBI-ES and CF could have been a factor. Considering emotional exhaustion is a feeling of depletion and a lack of energy, whereas depersonalization is a sense of detachment and lack of sympathy toward people (Maslach, Jackson, & Schwab, 1996), one could draw parallels between the CF experience of powerlessness and helplessness due to a psychological trauma (Herman, 1997) and these burnout symptoms. As CF has the same symptoms as PTSD, there appears to be a large overlap between the experience of avoidance, in CF, and depersonalization, in burnout.

Burnout and CF Rates

As outlined in the introduction, the combination of teacher performance-motivation theory (Blase, 1982) and relational-cultural theory (Jordan, 2000) emphasizes the role of the teacher/student relationship in the development of teacher burnout and CF. With the fact that a significant proportion of the present study’s sample of educators were experiencing high levels of emotional exhaustion (40.7%), acknowledged exposure to a secondary trauma (70.3%), and were experiencing PTSD-like symptoms at a level worthy of clinical intervention (43.2%), there was a clear indication that the negative consequences of burnout and CF could occur in educators and could result from the caring relationships they have with their students and/or colleagues.

Cheung and Chow (2011) studied caregivers for the elderly and concluded that burnout not only likely negatively affected the well-being of the helpers but also the well-being of their clients as well, while reducing the helpers’ caring effectiveness. Focusing on the relationship between educators and their students in the current study leads us to consider the possible impact of teacher wellness on students and their learning. By positioning relationships and mutual empathy (consisting of mutual care, impact, and responsiveness) as a critical component to wellness (Jordan, 2010), this framework demonstrates how students’ interactions with empathetic educators could be essential to their growth and engagement. In this way, we can view the teachers in this study as only one participant in relationships with students and consider that where teachers are experiencing burnout and CF, students may also be negatively affected.

Implications

CF in educators

There is robust research on the measurement and consequences of burnout within the teaching profession (Burke & Greenglass, 1995; Fisher, 2011; Kokkinos, 2007) but the impact of CF appears to be a relatively new area of investigation with educators (Borntrager et al., 2012). Much of the research on CF has been developed through studies with members of other helping professions (see Bride et al., 2004; Pryce et al., 2007); thus, the current study demonstrates support for educators to be included as members human service professionals who can potentially develop CF as a result of the empathetic interactions with the population they serve, or the staff with whom they serve.

First Canadian sample

From a review of the research literature, this study was the first to examine CF in Canadian educators, providing an important support to future research. With much of the existing research emanating from countries or regions that differ significantly in the school systems, employment contextual factors (such as employment stability and compensation), it is important that we focus on teachers in Canada.

Evidence for additional training and support

Approximately 40% of the present study’s sample indicated some type of formal or informal training on burnout, VT, and/or CF but only 23.7% had done so through in-service professional development and 13.6% through their formal postsecondary education program. Without attention to this type of professional development, we run the risk of not responding to them mental health needs of one of the most important workforce populations. Until changes are made within the school system by bringing knowledge and awareness of CF, other natural consequences, and how to prevent/mitigate against their negative effects to educators on a larger scale, some educators may continue to suffer in silence.

Both Pryce et al. (2007) and Newell and MacNeil (2010) suggested that social work students should be taught about these concepts, as well as self-care strategies, during their formal training and course work as educating students about these topics early in their careers has the potential to decrease vulnerability to burnout, VT, and CF: the same rationale could also be argued for preservice teachers.

Limitations

General

As with some of the previously reviewed studies (i.e., Cooley & Yovanoff, 1996; Hatcher et al., 2011; Kokkinos, 2007), issues of bias and generalizability were present in the current study due to the voluntary nature of participation. In this case, all participants came from the same school board and responded to notices about the workshop, advertised on their internal communications system. This, together with the relatively low number of participants, limits generalizability of the findings, and the lack of a control group limits our ability to draw inferences.

The impact of gender

Cieslak et al. (2014) noted in their meta-analysis that most studies consisted of predominantly female participants, and noted stronger associations between burnout and CF (r² = .48) for female, relative to male samples (r² = .37). This pattern of overrepresentation of women continued in the current study, where the participants were predominantly female, so the associations detected here between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization with CF may have been influenced by the predominance of female participants.

Burnout and CF rates

Applied research takes place within the context of political, social, professional, and personal circumstances, and this study was no different. The workshop was scheduled months in advance, and during the time between initial planning and implementation, contract negotiations between the teachers’ federations, school boards, and government were underway. The added strain of an impending strike, on top of regular teaching duties, could have inflated the levels of burnout reported, as occupational stress has been shown to be associated with burnout (Lopez, Bolaño, Mariño, & Pol, 2010); in addition, there is an association between CF and burnout, so this may have had an added impact on the results of the current study (Cieslak et al., 2014; Pryce et al., 2007).

Future Research

As stated earlier, most of the research to date on CF has been conducted with human service populations, which leads us to the first recommendation for future research to encourage more research into the relationship between CF and burnout with Canadian educators.

The second recommendation includes research that examines the impact of bringing education and awareness about burnout, CF, and secondary traumatic stress, as well as self-care, to teacher education at the initial teacher education level. Teacher education programs are typically 2 years long, for initial teacher education, and so potentially have the time and flexibility to incorporate a course or workshops on these topics. Most recently, Ontario College of Teacher’s programs increased from 1 to 2 years in 2015 (Alphonso, Morrow, & Bradshaw, 2013). The integration of such a course and findings from research conducted along these lines could potentially help bring more awareness of teacher wellness to educational policy makers and provide additional support for increased government funding for educational programs and supports toward educator mental health.

Moreover, as the present research reports that a significant number of educators in this sample were experiencing burnout and CF, the logical next step is then to examine how the students they serve are affected. Given the association between emotional exhaustion and students outcomes (Arens & Morin, 2016), research on CF and its relation to student learning and achievement would also be an interesting and potentially impactful area of investigation; researchers have been emphasizing the importance of teacher quality in student success for some time now (e.g., Sanders & Rivers, 1996), so this seems a logical next step. Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter (1996) noted that the quality of service provided by professionals declined with burnout, and other research has shown evidence of college students’ motivation and affective learning being negatively impacted by a teacher experiencing burnout and lacking nonverbal immediacy (Zhang & Sapp, 2008). Recent applied research found student motivation was negatively impacted for high school students when they were taught by teachers suffering from burnout (Shen et al., 2015), and that student coritsol levels increased as teachers’ self-reported burnout increased (Oberle & Schonert-Reicl, 2016). As the present research examined the impact of burnout and CF in educators, and found they were being negatively affected, the logical next step is then to examine how the people they serve are affected. There are good reasons to believe that when the teachers are doing well, so will their students.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Adam Koenig is a graduate of the master of arts in counselling psychology program at Western University. He has clinical experience working within the college and university systems and research interests involving self-care/development.

Susan Rodger is a psychologist and associate professor at the Faculty of Education, Western University. Her main research interests include mental health literacy education for those who care for children, teacher mental health, and school mental health.

Jacqueline Specht is a professor and director of the Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education at the Faculty of Education, Western University. Her main research interests include creating supportive school environments for students and the development of inclusive practices for beginning teachers.

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