Professional burnout and job satisfaction among physical education teachers in Greece

Aims: Nowadays, teachers in Greece are facing rapidly changing working conditions with
increased workload and working hours, severe pay cuts and high taxation. The purpose of
the present work was to evaluate burnout and job satisfaction among Physical Education
teachers in Primary Public schools in Greece.
Study Design: A survey of Physical Education teachers (n =132) received a
questionnaire and responded to the survey (n =105, 79.5% response).
Place and Duration of Study: This work was carried out in the region of West Greece, in
Primary Education Schools during the school year 2012-2013.
Methodology: A Pearson Correlation (results analysed with SPSS) was used to
investigate possible correlations between the examined parameters.
Results: The results indicate that teachers exhibited moderate levels of job satisfaction
(64.66 ±8.09), high levels of emotional exhaustion (26.14±9.37), low depersonalization
(1.69±0.79) and personal accomplishment (38.61±5.36). Job satisfaction was inversely
related with burnout (-0.433, P<0.05) but not related with demograppic parameters, such
as age and gender. On the contrary, gender had a significant effect on the levels of
emotional exhaustion (0.225, P=0.021) while family status had a significant effect on the
personal accomplishment (0.272, P=0.004). Teachers were mostly satisfied with their
working conditions, the work itself, their colleagues and mostly dissatisfied with working
hours, salary issues and low prospects of professional development.