The Effect of Organizational Commitment on Teacher-Coach Burnout

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the levels of burnout and organizational commitment within teacher-coaches, and additionally, to explore the degree to which organizational commitment mediated the relationship between teacher-coaches and burnout. The data was analyzed with quantitative analyses including multiple regression analysis and mediation analysis. Survey data was collected through the use of the Maslach Burnout Inventory - Educators Survey (Maslach, 1986) and the Meyer, Allen, and Smith’s (1993) Revised Three-Component Model (TCM) Commitment Survey. In total, 42 teacher-coaches and 21 teachers from Orange County, NY were eligible for the study, and thus, 63 total sets of data were analyzed. Additional background questions were added to the survey items for grouping purposes. The background questions were designed to probe the participants’ gender, subjects taught, sports coached, years of teaching experience, and years with current organization. The analyses revealed a significant difference between teachers and teacher-coaches in the personal accomplishment subscale of burnout, in the sense that teacher-coaches yielded a significantly greater level of accomplishment. The results also revealed a significantly higher level of affective commitment in teacher-coaches relative to teachers. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed evidence of partial mediation of the relationship between teacher-coaches and personal accomplishment by affective commitment. Future research should explore the impact of wins and losses on the relationship between a coach and their level accomplishment and commitment. Future research may also explore the degree to which the various sports individually impact this relationship given the varying degree of popularity and following among the individual interscholastic sports. Lastly, future research should be dedicated to finding the degree to which a teacher’s level of burnout and commitment is influenced by participating in other extracurricular roles within the school that are not sport-based