The Predictive Effect of Early Maladaptive Schemas and Hardiness on Burnout of Elementary School Teachers

Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion. The personality trait is one of the major causes of burnout, and schemas as personality traits discussed in personality developmental psychology are very important; therefore, in this study, we investigated the predictive effect of early maladaptive schemas and hardiness on burnout of first grade elementary school teachers. For this purpose, the study questionnaires were distributed to all of the first-grade elementary school teachers in Gonbad Kavous city, Iran (142 people) to collect data. At the end, 108 questionnaires were analyzed. The research instruments included demographic questionnaire, Burnout Scale, Kobasa’s Hardiness Scale –Short Form (1982) and Young's maladaptive schema-short form (2005). According to results, there is a positive and significant relationship between three domains of early maladaptive schemas include impaired performance and autonomy, impaired limits and hyper vigilance/inhibition with burnout. Also, there is a significant inverse relationship between hardiness and burnout. According to the results of multiple regression analysis, the model f study explains the 50.9% of the variance of burnout with the predictive power of two domains of impaired performance and autonomy and hyper vigilance/inhibition. Therefore, we conclude that considering the high predictive power of these two domains at the level of schema-based educational and therapeutic interventions can be effective in preventing or reducing teacher burnout.