Background & Objective: Nowadays, schools (institutions) are the foundation of any society. Studies indicate that students progress faster when their teachers have higher motivation. However, many factors contribute to job motivation, one of them is job burnout, which is one of the psychological syndromes followed by conditions such as emotional fatigue (e.g., chronic fatigue, sleep disorder, different physical symptoms), depersonalization, pessimistic thoughts about colleagues and clients, feeling guilty, isolation, low daily and work activities, and feelings of inadequacy (dissatisfaction with work, feelings of failure and inability, lack of perception and understanding, exploitation, constant feelings of oppression, and decreased job performance). Emotional fatigue indicates that a person has experienced long–term emotional exhaustion during difficult work activities. Depersonalization is when a person is insensitive and neutral towards others and has a negative reaction. Personal failure is when a person believes he or she does not have the necessary competence, efficiency, and productivity. The importance of job burnout and its negative effects has encouraged many researchers to investigate this issue. Teaching is one of the most stressful jobs. Therefore, research on this topic is necessary both theoretically and practically. According to previous studies, job empowerment based on Gottfredson's theory can improve performance in various fields. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of job empowerment based on Gottfredson theory on improving the components of burnout.
Methods: This quasi–experimental study has a pretest–posttest design with a follow–up and control group. The statistical population included all teachers working in District 2 of Tehran City, Iran, in 2019. A total of 30 teachers were selected using the purposive sampling method (considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria) and randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups, with 15 participants in each group. The inclusion criteria were teachers aged 35 to 55, gaining more than average score on Job Burnout Questionnaire, and having consent to participate in the study. The exclusion criteria were being absent for more than two sessions and being dissatisfied with the intervention. Job empowerment based on Gottfredson's theory was administered to the experimental group in eight 90–minute sessions. The components of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal performance) were measured in both groups simultaneously. The follow–up stage was performed on the two groups two months after the posttest. The research instrument was the Maslach Burnout Questionnaire (1981). Data were analyzed using the repeated measures analysis of variance in SPSS software version 24. P values <0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: The results showed that job empowerment based on Gottfredson's theory significantly improved depersonalization components (p<0.001) and personal performance (p<0.001) in the experimental group compared to the control group. Besides, the results of the Bonferroni post hoc test indicated a significant difference between the mean scores of pretest and posttest phases (p˂0.001) in the experimental group, as well as between pretest and follow–up steps (p˂0.001) for depersonalization and personal performance. Moreover, the positive effect of job empowerment based on Gottfredson's theory on improving the score of depersonalization and personal performance of teachers remained persistent up to the follow–up phase.
Conclusion: The job empowerment method based on Gottfredson's theory can improve teachers' performance and decrease burnout (depersonalization and personal performance) because it has lasting effects.