Relationships Among Teachers’ Perceived Control, Personality Traits, Burnout and Student Misbehavior

This study examined the relationships among teachers’ perceived control, personality traits, student misbehavior, and teacher burnout. Participants were 236 kindergarten and elementary teachers. Descriptive statistics indicated moderately high levels of perceived control: personal (M = 4.94, SD = 0.76), interpersonal (M = 4.52, SD = 0.80), and socio-political (M = 4.70, SD = 0.81). Among the Big Five personality traits, conscientiousness (M = 3.32, SD = 0.40), agreeableness (M = 3.29, SD = 0.41), and intellect/imagination (M = 3.20, SD = 0.40) received the highest ratings, falling in the “neither accurate nor inaccurate” range, whereas emotional stability was rated as “inaccurate” (M = 2.97, SD = 0.54). Teachers reported a moderate level of student misbehavior (M = 3.91, SD = 0.86), with peer-related behavior being most prevalent (M = 4.28, SD = 1.18), followed by adult-related behavior (M = 4.18, SD = 1.13) and setting events (M = 3.99, SD = 1.24). Correlation analysis showed strong interrelationships among perceived control and personality traits. Perceived control and personality traits had significant low to moderate associations, the strongest being between emotional stability and sociopolitical control (r = .295, p < .01). Student misbehavior was weakly but significantly correlated with all perceived control highest with socio-political control (r = .260, p < .01). Teachers’ burnout showed a statistically significant but weak positive correlation with emotional stability (r = .176, p < .01). All other correlations involving burnout were non-significant, suggesting that teachers’ burnout may not be strongly associated with the measured control or behavioral variables in this study. Keywords: perceived control, burnout, students ‘misbehavior, teachers’ personality