Professional self-esteem as a predictor of teacher burnout across Iranian and Turkish EFL teachers

The study aimed at measuring the perceived Professional Self-esteem, Emotional Exhaustion (EE), Depersonalization (DP), and Personal Accomplishment (PA) of Iranian (n = 230) and Turkish (n =156) EFL teachers and determining the prediction role of Professional Self-esteem in EE, DP, and PA processes. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) was used to measure the perceived burnout levels of the participants, and a shortened English version of Professional Self-esteem Scale developed by Aricak (1999) was employed to measure the participants’ self-esteem perceptions in five dimensions of satisfaction, knowledge development, commitment, adaptation and communication. The internal reliability of the professional self-esteem scale was r = 0.821. The results revealed that professional self-esteem was strongly correlated with EE, DP, and PA burnout. They also showed that EE, DP, and PA processes were better predicted by Satisfaction, Commitment, and Knowledge Development dimensions of Professional Self-esteem in the case of both Iranian and Turkish teachers, respectively. Moreover, the EE and PA prediction variances of Iranian group were greater than that of Turkish group, whereas the DP prediction variance of Turkish group was greater than that of Iranian group. The study highlights the significance of professional self-esteem in education and offers strategies for teachers and authorities to combat burnout for better teacher productivity.