Date Awarded

1995

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Department

Education

Advisor

Kevin Geoffroy

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among prolonged teacher stress (or burnout), teachers' perceptions of leadership style adaptability, and teacher irrational belief systems.;The York County School Division was chosen because of the relative availability of subjects. Three surveys measuring teachers' perceptions of leadership style and style adaptability, teachers' irrational belief systems, and prolonged teacher stress, were disseminated among elementary classroom teachers in the county. Out of 100 elementary school teachers surveyed, there were 71 responses.;Three dimensions of burnout were measured: Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant relationship among (1) emotional exhaustion, teacher's perceptions of principal leadership adaptability, teachers' irrational beliefs and the covariates of class size, percentage of discipline problems, percentage of students below grade in reading, percentage of students with IEP's and years of teaching experience (2) depersonalization, teachers' perceptions of principal leadership adaptability, teachers' irrational beliefs, and the covariates, and (3) personal accomplishments, teachers' perceptions of principal leadership adaptability, teachers' irrational beliefs, and the covariates.;It was concluded that a significant relationship exists between emotional exhaustion of teachers and the number of students in IEP's, between personal accomplishment and leadership adaptability, and between personal accomplishment and percentage of students with discipline problems. No significant relationship showed with the subscale of depersonalization, but this result was likely affected by sample size.;Further study is needed to evaluate the relationship between depersonalization and the predictor variables and to ascertain the degree of the relationship between leadership style and predictor variables.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.25774/w4-r2th-bc92

Rights

© The Author

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