The burnout levels of child development and education specialists in private special education schools and girls? vocational high schools according to various variables

This study has been conducted to examine the burnout levels of the Child Development and Education specialists (to be referred to as ?CDES?) working in the Private Special Education Schools (to be referred to as ?PSES?) and Girls? Vocational High Schools (to be referred to as ?GVHS?) according to various variables.Scope of this study has been formed by CDESs working at GVHSs and PSES in the provincial center of Ankara province during the 2007-2008 educational season. Sampling of the study has been formed with weighted classification sampling method, depending on the sampling size. A total of 102 CDESs from GVHSs, and 91 CDESs from PSESs have formed the sampling for this study.?Maslach Burnout Inventory? and ?Personal Data Form? have been used to gather data for this research.It has been determined that the Emotional Exhaustion (to be referred to as EE) levels of the CDESs were higher than those of working in the PSESs (p<0.05). For Insensitivity (to be referred to as I) and Personal Achievement (to be referred to as PA) points, no significant difference has been observed between the institutions (p>0.05). Similarly, it has been found out that, the EE points were higher for the CDESs with 5-10 years of experience. As for their ages, no major difference has been observed for the EE, I and PA points (p>0,05).As the points are evaluated according to the desire to leave own job, it has been determined that the points of EE and CDESI are mainly different than those who do not wish to leave (p<0.05). As for the CDESs working in the PSESs, the points of the EE who wish to change their jobs seem significantly higher (p<0,05). The I points of the CDESs working in the GVHSs, who wish to change their jobs, are significantly high (p<0,05).As the total points of the CDESs are evaluated, it has been found that there is a negative correlation between achieving the professional ideals and the idea of self-belonging to the institution being worked and the EE and I points; and a positive correlation with PA (p<0.05). Additionally, a negative relation has been found between the importance given by CDESs to their jobs and the I sub-dimension (p<0.05).