Educational occupations are considered one of the most stressful occupations with high risk of burnout. Educational workers have high workloads and diverse work tasks, which consist of work with children, parents, and administrative work as well. These workers are also parts of bigger work groups which can also present an extra challenge. How one copes with stress and burnout is influenced not only by the work itself, but also by individual differences and other factors. One cannot just avoid or ignore stress factors and stressful situations. Therefore, it is of great importance to develop strategies and characteristics which help with coping with stress. Supervision in one of those methods or group work forms, which can help in the development of a professional.
The focus of this thesis is the question how efficient supervision is as a stress coping method and burnout prevention tool. We have tried to assess whether inclusion in the process of supervision is a relevant factor in successful coping with stress and reduction of burnout of educational workers. We have conducted a quantitative analysis with data collected with an online questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of basic questions about taking part in a supervision process, adapted version of Maslach Burnout Inventory (Penko, 1994), a Brief-COPE questionnaire about coping with stress (Carver, 1997) and some basic data about the participants. In the analyses we compared the data of 100 educational workers, that have been a part of a group supervision in the last five years (provided by an external specialist – supervisor) and 100 educational workers, that have never taken part in supervision.
The results show a statistically important difference in burnout based on gender; women tend to have a higher level and intensity of emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, we have established, that there is no statistically significant difference in burnout in educational workers who have taken part in a supervision process and those, who have not attended such activities. We have concluded that other factors are of greater importance and have also highlighted some of those in our research (for example the number of years one has taken part in supervision, the number of times the supervision group has met in a year). We have not seen a meaningful difference in active coping with stress, we have however managed to establish a paramount disparity in avoidance strategies; educational workers that have taken part in supervision have a significantly lower level of avoidance strategies. The lesser the tendencies are to use avoidance strategies, the lower the chances of burnout across all dimensions.
The supervision process gives the supervisee a space and opportunity to voice his problems and use less avoidance strategies in stressful situations. This results in overall improvement and reduction of burnout. Other factors also impact this, not just supervision. A longstanding inclusion in supervision results in the reduction of emotional exhaustion and helps increase active coping with stressful situations. A higher number of meetings of the supervision group in a school year impacts the intensity of experiencing personal fulfilment.
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