A Comparison of Work-related Attitudes of TESOL

Members with Other Educators and Employee Groups: An

International Survey Using The Maslach Burnout inventory
Martha C. Pennington and Belinda Ho

Introduction
How do TESOL members feel about their chosen line of work? Are people who work in TESOL
basically satisfied with their employment or do they suffer from job stress and burnout? How does
their level of satisfaction compare to that of other educators and employee groups? These are
questions which are of considerable interest to TESOL members, to the institutions that employ
them, and to the organization as a whole.

This paper reports on a survey using the Maslach Burnout Inventoy [MBI] which is part of a
continuing line of research investigating the work-related attitudes of TESOL members. First, the
previous research on TESOL members and their employment concerns is reviewed. Next, the
burnout syndrome is discussed in terms of its general characteristics and the effects it has on
individuals and employee groups, with particular reference to teachers.Then, the research conducted
on TESOL members to discover their degree of burnout is summarized and analyzed in relation to
the demographic characteristics of the sample. Finally, the results of the burnout research are
compared to the results of the previous studies, and some tentative observations are made in relation
to TESOL members.

Previous Resesarch on Job-Related Attitudes of TESOL Members

The published literature on teachers’ attitudes towards their work (e.g., as summarized in Pennington,
1991a,b,c,d) indicates that, in general, teachers register moderate or high job satisfaction in
categories having to do with the nature of teaching work and its intrinsic values, while registering low
job satisfaction in categorieshaving to do with pay and particularly with opportunities for advancement.
Thus, teachers are generally satisfied with the intrinsic rewards of teaching but not with its extrinsic
rewards.

Within TESOL, the Blaber and Tobash (1989) report of the TESOL Employment Concerns Survey
indicated a high level of concern among ESL practitioners about pay, benefits, and professional
status. These concernswere confirmed by the results of two small-scale studies (Pennington &Riley,
1991a,b) that surveyed TESOL members about their job satisfaction, finding a general pattern of
employment attitudes consistent with those of teachers in other fields.

In the first of these studies (Pennington & Riley, 1991a),which employed the Minnesota Satisfaction
Questionnaire [MSQ], the average satisfaction score of respondents was 65.7 (out of a possible 100
points). This score was interpreted as indicating a moderate degree of overall job satisfaction for the
TESOL members - mainly teachers - who responded to the survey. The average scores in the MSQ
individual response categories of Advancement opportunities and Compensation, at less than half the
maximum score, were the lowest of the twenty included on the survey instrument. This result was

29
interpreted to mean that the TESOL respondents were least satisfied in the areas of opportunities
for advancement and pay. As judged by the highest average MSQ scores,job aspectsthat the TESOL
members found most satisfying were in the categories of Moral values (i.e., being able to do things
which do not go against one’s conscience) and Social service(i.e., the opportunity to perform a social
service in one’s work). In general, the survey respondents indicated that iithey were most satisfied
with those aspects of their work which represent its intrinsic rewards.

In the second of these studies (Pennington & Riley, 1991b),which employed the Job Descriptive Index
[JDI], the surveyed TESOL members - again, mainly teachers - averaged an overall satisfaction score
of 43.5 (out of a possible 54 points). This score was interpreted to represent a high degree of general
job satisfaction among those who responded to the second survey. As in the earlier survey,
respondents indicated least satisfaction with opportunities for advancement (the Promotions scale
of the JDI) and with the compensation for their work (JDI Pay scale), with average scores in each
of these categories falling well below the midpoint. In contrast, average scoreswere well above the
midpoint in the JDI categories for Co- Workers(i.e., the people the respondent interacts with on the
job), Work (i.e., the nature of the work in which the respondent is engaged), and Supervision (i.e.,
oversight on the job), suggesting moderate or high job satisfaction in these aspects of employment.

Teacher Burnout
Burnout is a syndrome that afflicts people who work in “helping professions” or other client-centered
fields. Burnout results from a form of chronic stress associated with the frequent interactions and
close contact with others that is required’ in “people work.” Those suffering from burnout feel
emotionally drained: “as emotional resources are depleted, workers feel they are no longer able to
give of themselves at a psychological level” (Maslach & Jackson, 1986: 1). Thus, they suffer from
emotional exhaustion. “When these feelings become chronic, teachers find that they can no longer
give of themselves to students as they once could” (Schwab, 1986: 18).

Burned out workers also suffer from depersonalization. Depersonalization refers to “negative,
cynical attitudes and feelings about one’s clients..., [a] callous or even dehumanized perception of
others” (Maslach & Jackson, 1986: 1). In Schwab’s (1986: 18-19) characterization:

Teachers who no longer havepositive feelings about their students are experiencing the second component
of teacher burnout, Depersonalization. Among the many ways teachers can display indifferent, negative
attituaes towards their students are: using derogatory labels (for example, they are animals'); exhibiting
cold or fitant attitudes; physically distancing themselves from students (for example, barn&ding
themselvesbehind their desk); and 'tuning out' students through psychological withdrawal.

Finally, in the burnout syndrome, according to Maslach and Jackson (1986: 1): “Workers may feel
unhappy about themselves and dissatisfied with their accomplishments on the job.” They therefore
suffer from a reduced sense of personal accomplishment According to Schwab (1986: 19):

The third aspect, a feeling of low Personal Accomplishmentfiom thejob, isparticularly crucial for teachers.
Most teachers enter the profession to help students learn and grow. When teachers no longerfeel that they
are accomplishing this, there are few other areas on which they can focus to receiverewards (for example,
putting in more time to make more money).

30
Previous research on burnout among teachers and others whoworkin human services(e.g., Maslach,
1982; Maslach &Jackson, 1982,1984,1986) has indicated that burnout may have serious effects on
the personal as well as the organizational level. For the individual, these include deteriorating
performance on the job, job dissatisfaction, and physical and psychological effects related to
insomnia, substance abuse, and family and marital problems. For the organization, the negative
effects of burnout include, in addition to the cumulative effects of employees’ poor performance,
absenteeism, high turnover, and low staff morale.

Other research (Gold, 1985; Maslach & Jackson, 1985; Pines, 1983; Russell et al., 1987; Schwab &
Iwanicki, 1982a,b; Schwab et al., 1986) has shown that the effects of potentially stressful aspects of
employment that may result in burnout are mitigated by factors such as the clarity with which the
employee’s job-related role and responsibilities are defined, the amount of support received from
colleagues and others, and the individual’s background characteristics and employment level.
Teachers experiencing less role ambiguity and strong social support are better able to cope with
stressand to diffuse its long-term effects such as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a low
senseof personal accomplishment. In terms of these three burnout symptoms, it has been found that
female teachers experience less depersonalization towards students than male teachers, older
teachers suffer less from emotional exhaustion than younger ones, and elementary teachers have
higher levels of personal accomplishment and less depersonalized feelings towards students than
secondary teachers (Schwab, 1986). In addition, the normed samples given in the Madach Burnout
Inventory Manual (Maslach & Jackso% 1986, p. 9) indicate less emotional exhaustion and
depersonalization, coupled with higher personal accomplishment for tertiary teachers than for those
teaching at K-12 level. Related research has shown that public school teachers in the U.S. (Menlo
et al., 1990) and Canada (Ball & Stenlund, 1990) experience high job satisfaction as compared to
those in some other countries such as England (Poppleton & Riseborough, 1990), West Germany
(Lissman & Gigerich, 1990), and Japan (Ninomiya & Okato, 1990).

The MBI Study

Purpose
The present research was undertaken to supplement and extend the results of previous research on
job satisfaction and professional concerns in ESL by carrying out a survey of TESOL members using
the MB1 Educators’ survey form. The MB1 provides a way of assessingTESOL members’ feelings
about their employment in terms of the burnout syndrome.
.
Survey Instrument
As described by Maslach and Jackson (1986), the MBI is a psychological measurement instrument
designed to assessthe three aspects of the burnout syndrome that have been identified in the
literature on work-related attitudes in human servicesfields: EmotionaZExhaustion,Depersonaliztion,
and lack of Personal Accomplishment. Each of these aspectshas been developed as a subscale of the
MBI. A high degree of burnout is reflected in high scores on the first two of these scales and in low
scoreson the last one.

The MB1 consists of 22 statements of feelings that potentially apply to those working in human
services. Examples of the statements are the following:

31
Sample Emotional Exhaustion statement:
I feel emotionally drained from my work.

Sample Depersonalization statement:

I feel I treat studentsas if they were impersonal objects.

Sample Personal Accomplishment statement:

I feel I’m positively influencing other people’slives through my work.

The respondent replies to each statement by assessinghow often s/he experiences the feeling
described, on a scale from “0 = Never“ to “6 = Every day”. A slight modification to the MBI form and
scoring procedures has made it possible to develop a special Educators’ form that focusesspecifically
on burnout in the teaching profession.

Both forms of the MBI are simple to fill out and take only 10-15minutes to complete. Both havebeen
favorably analyzed in terms of their reliability and validity (Bodden, 1985; Dowd, 1985; Maslach &
Jackson, 1986, ch. 2). They have both been widely used, and the published literature on results of
the survey implementations is relatively large (see Maslach & Jackson, 1986,for bibliography). For
both the Educators’ and the general form of the MBI, published norms exist for comparison with
newly surveyed populations. For all these reasons, the Educators’ form of the MBI seemsto be an
appropriate form to gather data to supplement what is already available on job-related attitudes of
TESOL members. *

Mailing Procedure and Response

The MBI Educators’ form was mailed to a random sampling of 300 TESOL members, extracted from
the organization’s computerized mailing list. Included in the envelope was the survey form, a letter
explaining the general purpose of the survey1and requesting the respondent’s participation in the
survey, a demographic data sheet, and a pre-addressed return envelope. Of the 106 survey forms
returned, eleven were unusuable. Two survey forms were returned unmarked by people who
indicated that theywere retired; one was returnedunopened, marked ’undeliverable address.” Eight
others could not be scored because of missing data or items marked “yes,” "yes," “N/A”2.
"?," "or Thus, the
survey results are based on the 95 responses, 31.67% of those mailed, which contained completed
questionnaires.

Subjects
Characteristics of subjects are given in Table 1 (next page). As can be seen from the table, half of
the group of respondents (except for the 5 caseswhere subjects did not indicate their age) was under
44 and half was 44 or over. The mean age of 43 is 1 to 2 points higher than in the Pennington and
Riley (1991a,b) research. The 76.9% response from females is also somewhat higher than the
proportion of females in those earlier studies. Nevertheless, the figures in the categories of age and
sexare not far off those of the previous two studies, indicating that they surveyed roughly comparable
populations. The 81.1% figure for responses coming the U.S.- which includes two Canadian
reponses - is comparable to the response in the Pennington and Riley (1991a,b) surveys and
representative of the TESOL membership. The figures for highest degree, field of study, and
employment status for the present study are comparable to those of the combined Pennington and

32
Table 1: Demographic Information on Subjects

CATEGORIES TOTAL (N = 95) FREQUENCY MISSING CASES

Age up to 43 45 50%’ 5
over 43 45 50%

Sex Male 21 23.1% 4

Female 70 76.9%

Country us 77 81.1% 0
Foreign 18 18.9%

Region Western US 25 26.3% 0

Central US 29 30.5%
Eastern US 26 27.4%
Asia 8 8.4%
Others 7 7.4%

Highest Degree Bachelor 12 13.0% 3

Masters 61 66.3%
Doctorate 19 20.7%

Educational ESL 42 45.7% 3

Educ./Lang. 47 51.1%
a
Other 3 3.3%

Employment Status Part-time 27 29.3% 3

Full-time 56 60.9%
Both 9 9.8%

Institution Non-academic 3 33% 3

K-12 18 19.8%
Ad.Ed./Jr.Col. 22 24.2%
4 yr./Intensive Prog. 48 52.7%

Job title Non-teaching 25 27.2% 3

L level academic 8 8.7%
M level academic 43 46.7%
H level academic 16 17.4%

Years in ESL l-9 43 46.7% 3

10-19 31 33.7%
20-37 18 19.6%

Under $20,000 29 33.3% 8

$2o,ooo-40,ooo 39 44.8%
Over !§40,000 19 21.8%

Work Hours o-4 10 10.9% 3

5-8 39 42.4%
Over 8 43 46.7%

33
Riley (1991a,b) survey results, as reported in Pennington (1991a), and to those of the TESOL
Employment Concerns survey (Blaber & Tobash, 1989).

The proportion of the MBI respondents indicating an affiliation with a 4-year college/university or
private intensive language institute, at 52.7% is high when compared to percentages for responses
in the 4-year category - ranging from 31%-44% - in any of the other three studies. Thus, the subjects
in the present study suggesta higher proportion of academics working at 4-year colleges/universities
or intensive language institutes than in the previous studies but are in other respects similar in
demographic characteristics to the samples of TESOL members surveyed in other recent research.

Although comparable data are not yet available, it is worth noting that over 17% of respondents hold
high-level academic titles, i.e., Principal Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Full
Professor, while nearly half (46.7%) hold mid-level academic titles such as Instructor or Teacher,
with a few in the lower category of titles such as Assistant Teacher or Tutor. In addition, over one-
fourth of the respondents (27.2%) hold non-academic titles such as Coordinator or Director. It is
also worth noting that the median score for number of years on the job in the surveyed group is above
10and the salary for two-thirds of the respondents at $20,000or higher, with over 20% above $40,000.
At the same time, fully one-third of the surveyed group - most but not all of them part-time - indicate
a salary of under $20,000. The last point to note is that nearly 50% of those surveyed say that it takes
them over 8 hours on an average work day to accomplish all the tasks, including preparation and
homework, connected to their jobs.

Findings
Survey results were scored according to the procedures described in the Maslach Bumout Inventory
manual (Maslach & Jackson, 1986), using the special scoring key, and then input to a computer for
analysis with the SPSSsoftware. Descriptive statistics were computed for each of the three scales,
Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Pmonal Accomplirhment, so that these scores could
be compared to the norms for educators and other employee groups in the MBI Manual. The scores
can be compared by inspecting Table 2 (p.35).

As compared to the overall figures for the other 11,067employees surveyed by Maslach and Jackson
(1986), the TESOL group is slightly lower on the Emotional Exhaustion subscale,considerably lower
on the Depersonalization subscale, and considerably higher on the Personal Accomplishment
subscale. The TESOL group therefore seemsto suffer lessfrom the stress-related effects associated
with burnout than does the general population of human services workers.

When compared to the individual occupational subgroups, the TESOL group scores somewhat
lower on Emotional Exhaustion than the K-12 teachers, social servicesworkers, doctors and nurses,
and other group (which includes lawyers, police officers, and librarians, ministers and other
categories of employees not covered in the other subgroups), while scoring somewhat higher on
Emotional Exhaustion than the post-secondary educator group and considerably higher than the
mental health worker group of counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. In the category of
Depersonalization, the TESOL group had the lowest score of all the groups surveyed, even
somewhat lower than the post-secondary educators group and considerably lower than the K-12

34
Table 2: Comparison of Mean (M) and Standard Deviation (SD) for TESOL Group (Present Study) and Otha
Occupational Subgroups (Maslach & Jackson, 1986~9) on Subscales of the M&v&h wmroert Inventory

MBI SU&KALES

EMOTIONAL DEPERSONALIZATION PERSONAL

EXHAUSTXON ACCOMPLISHMENT

TESOL M 19.46 5.10 38.66

Group SD 11.31 4.62 5.52

AU Other M 20.99 8.73 34.58

Employee Groups SD 10.75 5.89 7.11

K-12 Teachers M 21.25 11.00 35.54

SD 11.01 6.19 6.89

Tertiary Teachers M 18.57 5.57 39.17

SD 11.95 6.63 7.92

Social Services Workers M 21.35 7.46 32.75

SD 10.51 5.11 7.71

Doctors & Nurses M 22.19 7.12 36.53

SD a 9.53 5.22 7.34

Counselors, M 16.89 5.72 30.87

Psychologists,& SD 8.90 4.62 6.37
Psychiatrists

Other M 21.42 8.11 36.43

(e.g. Attorneys, SD 11.05 6.15 7.00
Police, Ministers)

group, which has the highest score in this category of all employee groups, according to the Maslach
and Jackson (1986) data. In the category of Personal Accomplishment, the TESOL group scored
somewhat lower than the post-secondaryeducators group. Otherwise, their Personal Accomplishment
score was considerably higher than that of all the other employee subgroups provided in the Maslach
Burnout Inventory Manual (Maslach & Jackson, 1986) for comparison.

On the whole, the mean scores of the TESOL group are closest to those of the post-secondary
educators group. This stands to reason, considering that the TESOL group draws heavily on
educators working at post-secondary level.

These results should be interpreted with caution, considering the special nature of the sample, which
is mainly from U.S. respondents over 30 years of age - generally, well over that age - holding post-
graduate qualifications and working at post-secondary level. It is likely that a very different result
might obtain if TESOL members outside the U.S. or K-12 teachers were the focus of the study, or
if non-members were surveyed.
Conclusion
The results of the present survey of TESOL members using the MBI do not indicate the presence
of the burnout syndrome, as defined by high emotional exhaustion and depersonalized attitudes
towards students, accompanied by a low sense of personal accomplishment. In fact, they indicate
that TESOL’members, at least as judged by those who responded to this survey, experience less
Depersonalization and a greater senseof Personal Accomplishment from their work than others in
human servicesprofessions. As one TESOL respondent to the MBI survey, a part-time teacher, put
it:

I love my job! I'm happier in this job than I've ever been and I taught junior high school for 16 years then
worked as a manager in businessfor 14 years.

In the context of the survey results obtained previously with TESOL members, the current results
confirm a moderate-to-high degree of satisfaction with intrinsic aspects of the work such as
relationships with others and feelings of worth and accomplishment that come with fulfillment of job
responsibilities. The results of the MSQ, JDI, and MBI surveystaken together suggestthat, for many
TESOL members, the intrinsic rewards and positive social relations of the job may mitigate the
potentially stressful aspectsof ESL work and compensate to some degree for the inadequate career
structure and financial rewards which many perceive as existing in the field.

Acknowledgement
This paper was presented at the TESOL annual conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia,
on March 6, 1992. The cost of the survey was underwritten by TESOL, in the form of a grant
sponsored by the Intensive English Programs Interest Section. We wish to thank TESOL Special
Grants committee for its support and the Central Office for its assistancein generating the mailing
labels for the survey.

Notes
1. The purposewas describedas surveyingjob-related attitudes. To ensureagainstany pre-biassingof
responses,no mention of “burnout” was made.

2. Most of the answersmarked “N/A” were statementsrelated to the Depersonalization scale,which

assessesthe respondent’srelationships with students,and most of the “N/A” responsescamefrom
respondents who were not in fact teachers - e.g., a course developer for a telecommunications
company,an employeeof a statedepartment of education,and two administrators. Someof those who
marked “yes”or “""?” for somestatementsmay havebeen uncomfortablewith the scalealternatives,as
one respondentremarked, “It’s difficult to judge someof theseareas,”and another observedin relation
to a particular statementthat “a freqeuncyscaleiswrong for this vaguestatement.”A third respondent,
who left many of the items blank made the following comment:

Most of these statements are inappropriately phrased if the responsehas to be in terms of frequenciesper
year/mo/week/&y. They seem to mix frequency of occurrence of eventswith feelings about eventsin odd
ways.

36
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