Sense of Efficacy and Burnout among General and Special Needs Education Teachers

Teacher self-efficacy as defined is the teacher’s belief in his own capability to prompt student engagement and learning even when students are difficult or unmotivated. It can also be developed and influenced by a lot of factors such as teacher training, teaching experiences, support from colleagues, and personal characteristics. Burnout as defined by the World Health Organization is a syndrome conceptualized resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is further defined as having three dimensions: a. feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, b. increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job, and c. reduced professional efficacy. This research aims to see if there is a significant difference in terms of the burnout experienced by teachers when grouped according to unit. It is also aimed to see if there is a significant difference in the teacher’s sense of efficacy of general education and special education teachers. The results revealed that there is no significant difference in terms of burnout experienced by teachers when grouped according to unit. When the teacher’s sense of efficacy was calculated and analyzed, it revealed that there is no significant difference in the teacher’s sense of efficacy of general education and special education teachers.


INTRODUCTION
Teacher self-efficacy as defined is the teacher's belief in his own capability to prompt student engagement and learning even when students are difficult or unmotivated.It can also be developed and influenced by a lot of factors such as teacher training, teaching experiences, support from colleagues, and personal characteristics.
Burnout as defined by the World Health Organization is a syndrome conceptualized resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.It is further described as having three dimensions: a. feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, b. increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job, and c. reduced professional efficacy.
In the study of Pabatang and Zabala published in 2022, the Focus Group Discussion results showed that doing tasks unrelated to teaching, overloading work, and overlapping meetings are the main causes of burnout among educators in the College of Education of Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology.
Increased level of stress and burnout are experienced by special education teachers as revealed in the study by Emery and Vandenberg in 2010.Further, they are susceptible to low job satisfaction and low self-efficacy.
On the contrary, Sarikam and Sakiz in 2014 stated that there were significant relationships between teacher self-efficacy and burnout.The results emphasized the importance of self-efficacy beliefs in special education staff's level of emotional involvement, sense of accomplishment and engagement.It also disclosed that special education teachers have lower burnout scores as compared to music, art and primary education teachers.Further, the research revealed that special education teachers reported significantly higher self-efficacy levels than music, art and primary education teachers.It was also revealed in that research that teacher's self-efficacy was lower among primary, music, and art teachers as compared to special education teachers.Further, according to Villarejo et al. (2022), occupational burnout among teachers is closely associated with work demands which later on resulted to emotional fatigue and low self-efficacy among public school teachers.

Statement of the problem
Specifically, this research aims to answer the following research questions: 1. Is there is a significant difference in terms of the burnout experienced by teachers when grouped according to unit? 2. Is there a significant difference in the teacher's sense of efficacy among general education and special education teachers? Hypotheses: H01: There is no significant difference in terms of the burnout experienced by teachers when grouped according to unit.
H02: There is no significant difference in the teacher's sense of efficacy among general education and special education teachers.
The null hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance.
This research looked into the burnout and teacher's self-efficacy of general and special needs education teachers in San Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila School in Marikina.The results of this study can be used to evaluate, plan and execute ways to support teachers cope with burnout and consequently keep them efficient in their chosen career.programs for teachers who are experiencing burnout and losing teacher self-efficacy in their chosen career.

Type of research
In this research, descriptive correlational analysis was utilized.Correlation was used to determine the relationship of burnout and teacher's self-efficacy between general education and special education teachers.The descriptive method was used to determine the teacher's profile in terms of a. number of years in the institution; b. age; c. sex; and d. marital status.

Research setting and participants
The participants were 26 teachers from San Lorenzo Ruiz De Manila School in Marikina City.There were 18 teachers from the General Education Unit and 8 from the Special Education Unit.All the respondents are actively teaching for the school year 2022-23.Further, the mode of teaching in the school is a combination of online and onsite for the aforementioned school year.The identities of the respondents in this research were kept unspecified for confidentiality.

Data collection process
A letter of permission to conduct research was submitted to the Academic Director for approval.The academic director then gave explicit instructions to the principals that research will be done in the institution.After approval, the researcher gave the survey tools to the basic education principal and senior high school principal.The researcher being the principal in the special unit conducted the survey to the respective teachers.The data collection process was done onsite.

Resources, materials and tools
The demographic profile of the respondents such as the a. number of years in the institution; b. age; c. sex; and d. marital status were collated and analyzed for the first part.The second part of the survey is the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory.Lastly, the third part of the research is the Teachers' Sense of Self-efficacy Scale.
The 16-item Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) was originally constructed and validated among different German occupational groups (Demerouti, 1999;Demerouti & Nachreiner, 1998).The tool aims to assess the two core dimensions of burnout which are exhaustion and disengagement from work.The survey used a 4-point Likert Scale for scoring.On the other hand, the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale was developed by Megan Tschannen-Moran and Anita Woolfolk Hoy in 2001.The tool is sometimes called Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale as it was developed in Ohio State University.The questionnaire was designed to understand the things that create difficulties for teachers in their school activities.The tool focused on three factors namely a. efficacy in student engagement, b. efficacy in instructional strategies, and c. efficacy in classroom management.

Data analysis process
The data were collated and tabulated for statistical analysis.The data were subjected to the following statistical analyses.Percentages and frequency counts were used to analyze the demographic profile of the teachers.Pearson correlation was utilized to determine the relationship between burnout and self-efficacy of all the teachers.On the other hand, Mann Whitney Wilcoxon U Test was used to was used to determine the significant differences between the teachers' self-efficacy and burnout of general and special education teachers when grouped into their respective unit.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
When it comes to years of service, 14 participants have been in the company for 1 to 5 years with 53.8%.On the other hand, 11 participants are 26 to 30 years old with 42.30%.There were 18 females with 69.20 % and 8 males with 30.8% in this research.On marital status, 18 participants are single with 69.20 %, 7 are married, and 1 widowed.Upon analysis of the data retrieved on the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, it was revealed that all the participants scored medium on all the items in the inventory.The results yielded same results for general education and special education teachers.Mean comparison between burnout level of general education and special education teachers was analyzed.Table 2 presents the mean comparison between general education and special education teachers in terms of burnout.The results revealed that there is no significant difference in terms of burnout experienced by teachers when grouped according to unit.Hence, the null hypothesis is accepted.
The findings of this research are contrary to the research of Emery and Vandenberg in 2010 where special education teachers experience high levels of stress and burnout.
When the teacher's sense of efficacy was calculated and analyzed, it revealed that there is no significant difference in the teacher's sense of efficacy between general education and special education teachers.Consequently, the null hypothesis is accepted.Table 3 shows the mean comparison between general education and special education teachers in terms of teacher's sense of efficacy.The results of this research are contrary to the research by Sarikam and Sakiz in 2014 where there is a significant difference between teacher self-efficacy and burnout.

IV. CONCLUSION
The objective of this study is to is to determine if there is a significant difference in terms of the burnout experienced by teachers when grouped according to unit.Based on the results, the level of burnout of general education and special education teachers are the same.It can be said that this is contrary to researches where special education teachers have a high burnout level.One of the possible reasons why special teachers do not experience high burnout is the support of the institution.San Lorenzo Ruiz De Manila School (SLRMS) with the initiative of the Human Resources Department provides program for the employees' mental health.The program started in 2019 even before the height of the pandemic.Identify, Connect, Understand (ICU) is one of the programs being implemented in the institution.Another is Intouch Community Services where employees are given free consultation to a psychologist and subsidized consultation fee to a psychiatrist.This implies that despite the transition from onsite to online and the continuous change in the learning modality, the teachers are not experiencing high burnout level due to the support of the school.Another probable reason is the culture and the environment of the institution.SLRMS supports not only the mental health, but also the spiritual health of the employees.Being a Catholic school, fellowship was done once a month headed by the Christian Life Center.However, due to lack of manpower as a result of the financial crisis brought about by the pandemic, the program was discontinued.The teacher's sense of self-efficacy was also measured and the results revealed that there is no significant difference in the self-efficacy of general education and special education teachers.This might be attributed to the trainings and recognition that the school provides for its employees.SLRMS employs in-service training for teachers at least twice a year.The trainings were intensified at the onsite of the pandemic.A number of trainings were provided on how to use technology during remote learning.Throughout the year, the school also provides curriculum and assessments trainings to teachers.Another program of the school that is highly appreciated by the teachers and staff is the employee's night.In this event, outstanding teachers and employees are given monetary reward and certificate for their exemplary performance.The CSE awards are given to employees who have demonstrated exemplary acts or behaviors of COMMUNION, SERVICE, AND EXCELLENCE worthy of emulation of members of the school community.Service awards are also given to employees who have rendered 5, 10, 15, and 20 years in the institution.
It can then be concluded that with the programs that the school implements, the teachers do not experience high level of burnout despite the challenges presented in the field of education brought about by COVID-19.Further, the teacher's sense of efficacy of general education and special education teachers are the same.It can then be concluded that they are given proper trainings to ensure that they are well-equipped and well-prepared in times of uncertainty.
With the findings, the researchers recommend that mental health programs should be a top priority in an educational institution.The Department of Education should ensure that mental health programs must be implemented across the country.Further studies can be steered in public schools to determine if there are differences in the results between private and public schools.A bigger population can also strengthen the findings of this research.

Table 1 .
Table 1 presents the demographic profile of the participants.Demographic Profile of Teachers (n=26)

Table 2 .
Mean Comparison between General Education and SpEd Teachers (Burnout)

Table 3 .
Mean Comparison between Gen Ed and SpEd Teachers (Teacher's Sense of Efficacy)