A Study of the Relationship between Principals' Leadership Styles and Job Burnout (Case Study: High School Teachers in Nour Abad City)

The present study was conducted with the aim of studying the relationship between principals’ leadership styles and job burnout among teachers of high schools in Nour Abad city of Iran in educational year 2013-14. Research methodology has been descriptive-correlational, and it has been applied in terms of purpose. Statistical population included all the teachers of high schools in Nour Abad city. A sample size of 118 people were selected by using Morgan table through random sampling method. In order to measure the principals’ leadership style from teachers’ viewpoint, the Fred Luthans’ questionnaire (researcher-made and containing 35 questions) was used; its reliability was measured as 0.90 by using Cronbach's alpha. For measuring job burnout, Maslach’s job burnout questionnaire (containing 22 questions in Likert scale) has been used, whose reliability was measured as 0.71 by using Cronbach's alpha. Besides, questionnaires’ validity was approved of by the experts. The findings obtained from questionnaires were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics (t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient and variance analysis) through SPSS software. The results are as follows: principals are oriented more toward task-oriented leadership styles and teachers’ job burnout can be predicted through principals’ task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership styles. Principals’ task-oriented leadership style results in teachers’ job burnout. Of course, employees’ (male and female) opinions about teachers’ job burnout is not the same and there is a difference between the degrees of teachers’ job burnout in terms of years of service, and there is no difference between the degrees of teachers’ job burnout in terms of education.