The Role of Teacher Autonomy in Burnout Processes among Iranian and Turkish EFL Teachers

The study aimed at measuring the perceived burnout levels of Iranian (N= 230) and Turkish (N=156) EFL teachers, determining the teacher autonomy predictors of EE, DP and PA burnout processes, and exploring their cross-cultural roles. The MBI-ES was used to measure the perceived burnout levels of the participants, and a self-developed Teacher Autonomy Scale (11 items) based on the six-component teacher autonomy model of LaCoe (2008) was employed to measure the participants’ autonomy perceptions in the areas of (a) pedagogy, (b) curriculum evaluation, (c) decision making and (d) problem solving. The internal consistency reliability of the 11-item scale was r=0.762. The results revealed that there was a slight significant difference between Iranian and Turkish groups only in EE processes, three dimensions of the teacher autonomy scale predicted the EE, DP and PA burnout processes, and its curriculum evaluation, problem solving, and decision making dimensions played discriminatory role in EE, DP and PA processes across Iranian and Turkish teachers.