Teacher Temperament: Correlates with Teacher Caring, Burnout, and Organizational Outcomes

This study utilized the Big Five personality measure to assess the relationships among teacher temperament, caring orientation, and dimensions of teacher burnout. Perceptions of supervisor caring, job satisfaction, and teacher motivation were assessed. Respondents in this study were 48 college faculty teaching a variety of classes at a medium-sized Southwestern university. Teacher caring was negatively related to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, loss of personal accomplishment, and neuroticism while positively related to agreeableness, conscientiousness, job satisfaction, and motivation. A canonical correlation analysis examined the relationship between the five domains of teacher temperament and three dimensions of burnout. Teacher temperament predicted a significant amount of variance of caring. The results support a theoretical model of teacher temperament, caring, and burnout, and provide a foundation for future research in instructional communication.