Occupational burnout of special education and rehabilitation teachers when working with people with intellectual disabilities

The work of a special education and rehabilitation teacher, who works with people with mental disabilities and other associated disorders, is demanding and causes professional strains that trigger stress in an individual, and in extreme cases lead to occupational burnout. Burnout affects various areas of individual’s functionality: emotional, physical, psychological and social area. The consequences are visible both in the individual’s functioning in the workplace (decrease in job satisfaction, absenteeism from work, feeling of uselessness, etc.), and in his private life (problems in the area of interpersonal relationships, aimlessness, emotional numbness, etc.). In our research, we focused on exploring the level of occupational burnout among special education and rehabilitation teachers, who work with people with mental disabilities and other associated disorders, and its connection with the degree of one's own sense of efficacy, workplace and the employees’ period of employment. In the empirical part, we used a descriptive and causal non-experimental method of pedagogical research. The research approach was quantitative. The sample consisted of 93 special education and rehabilitation teachers, employed in the adapted program for pre-school children, adapted educational program with a lower educational standard, and a special education program. By statistical analysis of data, we concluded that most of the participants in the study are showing signs of burnout at least in one of the three dimensions (emotional burnout, depersonalisation, personal fulfilment) of the burnout syndrome. No statistically significant differences were found between different workplaces, which are occupied by the participants in our research. Statistically significant differences were prominent in the area of period of employment. Individuals classified under High burnout have on average a shorter period of employment than the individuals classified under Low burnout. We also discovered that our sample shows, with a low level of reliability, a trend of negative correlation between the sense of efficacy and burnout, as participants belonging to the category Low burnout are achieving higher results on the Teacher's sense of efficacy scale. Participants of the research are managing stress and overcoming signs of burnout with the help of various strategies, and most often through participation in sports and recreational activities. We have developed the guidelines to prevent the occupational burnout syndrome. Help and support are needed at the level of an individual (sports and recreational activities, relaxation techniques, communicational skills, etc.), as well as at the level of work organisation (supervision, support of leadership, positive climate, etc.). We collected all the guidelines regarding help and support and incorporated them in a brochure located at the end of this thesis. Based on the conducted research, we highlighted the problem of occupational burnout of special education and rehabilitation teachers, and thus contributed to the prevention and confrontation with occupational burnout of special education and rehabilitation teachers