An analysis between teacher trust in the principal and teacher burnout as identified by teachers in selected Texas public schools

Developing trusting relationships and reducing teacher burnout are two pressing issues that principals and superintendents confront on a daily basis in public schools. With the increasing demands of state mandated testing, No Child Left Behind, and improving standards for all students, principals and superintendents need to understand the relationship between the factors that influence student performance and a positive learning environment. The purpose of this study was to analyze teacher trust in the principal and teacher burnout as identified by teachers in selected Texas public schools. In this study, a cross-tabulation of teacher burnout by teacher trust in the principal indicated a moderate to strong association between the two variables. The Pearson product-moment correlation produced a strong, positive correlation of 0.61 (p<0.01) between teacher trust in the principal and teacher burnout. In addition, teachers who indicated low trust in the principal are about 28 percent more likely to experience high teacher burnout. In fact, out of the 315 teachers who completed this survey, not one teacher who reported high teacher trust in the principal scored high on teacher burnout. Next, the researcher explored how selected demographic variables influenced the teacher trust-burnout relationship. According to this study, the number of years that the teacher has worked with the principal has a strong influence on the teacher trust-burnout relationship, and the teacher??s age and the teacher??s experience have a moderate effect. In addition, teacher gender appears to have a slight effect on the teacher trust-burnout relationship, and principal gender, principal age, and principal race appear to not affect the teacher trust-burnout relationship at all. The researcher was unable to draw any conclusions on the influence of teacher race on the teacher trust-burnout relationship due to the small number of African American, Hispanic, Asian, and other race teacher respondents. Finally, the multivariate regression analysis suggested that teacher trust in the principal and the demographic variables in this study account for nearly 40 percent of the variance for teacher burnout. The results of this study suggest that principals must focus on developing trusting relationships with their teachers to reduce teacher burnout.