[Personality as a teacher's burnout predictor]

Teachers form a professional group that is prone to burnout syndrome. The reason for that may be sought in the specific character of the job as well as in teachers themselves. The aim of the research is an attempt to define the relation between burnout in the teaching profession and personal traits in the context of two criteria, gender and the place of employment.

In a group of 390 teachers, 312 women and 78 men were examined. They represented varied levels of professional advancement and different workplaces. Two methods were applied in the research, Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and NEO-FFI Inventory for measuring personality.

The results provide evidence that the relationship between professional burnout and personal traits does exist. Two main traits have been distinguished, neuroticism and extraversion. It has been noted that there is an association between conscientiousness and professional effectiveness. Although men and women have different personal traits, there are no differences between them as far as the range of burnout syndrome is concerned. The most distinct symptoms of burnout were revealed by junior high school teachers. A raised competence explicitly decreases them.

Personality is an important predictor of teachers' burnout and its role grows in confrontation with difficult school reality offered by junior high schools.