COPING STYLES IN STRESSFUL SITUATIONS AND THE PHENOMENON OF PROFESSIONAL BURNOUT OF SPECIAL EDUCATORS

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine whether aspects of occupational burnout, i.e. psychophysical exhaustion, lack of involvement in relations with pupils, a sense of professional ineffectiveness, and disappointment are significantly related to the specificity of educational work and care in special education. 

The objective of the study was also to determine the relationship between coping styles adopted by teachers in stressful situations, i.e. task-oriented, emotion-oriented, and avoidance-oriented coping, with the degree of intellectual disability of pupils adopted as a criterion. 

The degree of intellectual disability of pupils under the teachers' care was adopted as a differentiating criterion in the analysis. The research was conducted among 77 teachers from the Special Training and Education Centre in Słupsk. In order to collect research material the authors used a diagnostic survey and the following research tools: The Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) and Link Burnout Questionnaire (LBQ) by Massimo Santinello. 

The analysis of the obtained results indicates the existence of a relationship between occupational burnout among special education teachers, and their pupils' degree of disability. A dependency was observed between the sense of burnout in assessing one's own competence (sense of ineffectiveness), and the pupil's degree of intellectual disability, where effectiveness subjectively assessed by teachers decreases as disorders in the level of pupils' intellectual development and social functioning increase. 

The obtained results also indicate task-oriented coping style as dominating among the studied teachers. This strategy dominated in the group who worked with pupils with mild and profound intellectual disability.