Primary teachers' burnout at the inclusive education schools in Macao

"In 2021/2022 academic year, there are 2,244 SEN students in Macau and its growth rate is 36% in ten years. However, at the present, there are 38 schools providing the related education to them. Admittedly, this is an unbalanced supply and demand. In fact, the teachers who work at inclusive education schools are bearing all responsibility to teach SEN students and their mental health is worth to attention. Moreover, there are 1,224 SEN students in primary (2021/2022 academic year), it accounting for 55% of all. That is, the numbers of their teachers are the most and they are representative. Therefore, exploring primary teachers’ burnout at inclusive education schools becomes the topic of this study, even more important, it is including to compare normal and resource teachers. This topic is rarer currently in Macau. On the one hand, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and (reduced) personal accomplishment are dimensions of burnout (Maslach et al., 1996). These become the dependent variables of this study. According Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and the factors of self-efficacy in inclusive education (Sharma et al., 2012), the following hypotheses are provided to guide this study: (1) normal teachers’ emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment are higher than those in resource teachers; (2) teachers’ attitudes into inclusive education, (3) teachers’ self-efficacy to use inclusive instruction (SEII), (4) teachers’ self-efficacy in collaboration (SEC) and (5) teachers’ self-efficacy in v managing behavior (SEMB) both are negatively related to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment; (6) teachers’ stress of Covid19 is positively related to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment. On the other hand, quantitative methodology, and snowball sampling are used in this research. At last, 132 responds are collected, including 100 normal teachers and 32 resource teachers. They are from 48 inclusive education schools in Macau. All data were analyzed by SPSS 25.0. The results of this study are followed: (1) teachers’ emotional exhaustion level is middle, their depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment levels both are low; (2) resource teachers’ emotional exhaustion and depersonalization are higher than normal teachers; (3) teachers’ attitudes into inclusive education negatively related to depersonalization but positively related to reduced personal accomplishment; (4) in the factors of self-efficacy, only SEII is negatively related to reduced personal accomplishment; (5) teachers’ stress of Covid-19 is positively related to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment."