Predictive Powers of Burnout and Self-Compassion on Job Performance of Secondary School Teachers in Rivers State, Nigeria

The study investigated the predictive powers of burnout and self-compassion on job performance of secondary school teachers in Rivers State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a correlation research design. The population of the study comprised all the 14,233 (6,830 male and 7403 female) teachers in the 247 public secondary schools in Rivers State. The sample size of the study was 845 (367 male and 478 female) teachers. The proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to arrive at the sample size. Three instruments titled “Self-Compassion Scale†(SCS), “Teachers’ Burnout Scale†(TBS) and Teachers’ Job Performance Scale (TJPS) were used for data collection. Face, content and construct validities were ensured. The reliability coefficients of 0.80, 0.71 and 0.86 for TBS, SCS, TJPS were determined using Cronbach alpha. Simple regression was used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested with t-test associated with simple regression. It was found that the predictive powers of burnout and self-compassion on job performance of teachers were 18.6% and 55.4%. Moreso, burnout and self-compassion are significant predictors of teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria. It was recommended that school principals should routinely utilize the services of Psychologist to mentor and manage the stress levels of the teachers before they degenerate to burnout. A friendly and enabling environment should be provided by the Principals in order to enhance teachers’ compassion.