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Ainsworth, M. (1985). Patterns of infant-mother attachments: Antecedents and ef-fects on de-
velopment. Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, 61(9), 771–790.
Bowlby, J. (2007). Przywiązanie. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Main, M., Solomon, J. (1990). Procedures for Identifying Infants as Disorganized/Disoriented
during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. In: M. T. Greenberg, D. Cichetti, M. Cummings
(eds.), Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research, and intervention. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 121–161.
Horowitz, L. M, Bartholomew, K. (1991). Attachment Styles Among Young Adults – A Test Of
a Four-Category Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), pp. 226–244.
Muszyński, H. (1987). Wychowanie moralne. Warsaw: WSiP.
Renata Gardian-Miałkowska
The Stefan Batory State Higher Vocational School in Skierniewice
ORCID: 0000-0002-1063-589X
Elżbieta Lisowska
Professional condition of teachers. In search of an effective prophylaxis for
professional burnout
Oficyna Wydawnicza “Impuls”, Kraków 2018, p. 273
In Elżbieta Lisowska’s reviewed work, the first sentence opening the
reviewed monograph announces that we will be dealing with an interesting
and thought-provoking book. The author undertook the difficult task of
arranging and refining the methodology of diagnostic procedures aimed at
identifying the professional threat to teachers that professional burnout is.
The main goal undertaken by the author was to describe the fullest possible
diagnosis, which had not only a selection and qualification function, but what
is more important – interventional, closely connected with the pedagogue’s
practical activity. The task that Elżbieta Lisowska set herself was not easy, just
as the phenomenon of professional burnout is not easy. The recognition of
this phenomenon is not and cannot be an intuitive process based on common,
non-scientific knowledge, nor is it an independent activity – it is subject to
strict rules of research procedure.
The psycho-social evolution of the teaching staff in the course of their
work is determined by the ever-new expectations of the founding bodies,
the management, parents and at the same time existential uncertainty. The
general professional situation of a teacher aims at creating new premises for
negative phenomena in the teaching community. In this respect psychology,
work psychology and pedagogy have two functions: cognitive (diagnostic)
and practical (preventive and prophylactic). The former is made possible by
conducting basic research, the latter is implemented by developing conclusions
and recommendations from practical research. The book proposed to the
audience – psychologists, labor psychologists, educators and teachers – by
Elżbieta Lisowska is an example of a dissertation on the latter trend and the
197
Reviews
function of humanities and social sciences, including upbringing. Pedeutological
diagnostics serves primarily to understand the adult teacher, to intervene more
effectively, to change them and their immediate environment. This is only
possible through diagnostics carried out in accordance with methodological,
professional and ethical standards.
The book under review has a model structure. Starting from the
theoretical basis, it aims to show the professional burnout in its three
dimensions: emotional burnout, depersonalization and lack of sense of
achievement, and finally it talks about elements of prevention and prophylaxis.
The first chapter is an erudite presentation of findings in pedeutology
and psychology of labor. It is apparent that the author feels phenomenal in
this issue. We receive a rich introduction to the issue of competence. It must
be admitted that in the current literature, people writing about teachers rarely
leave this area. Then we can read about the different concepts of teaching. The
last part of this chapter deals with the professional condition of teachers. In
this section we can read about the burning out of teachers, we get acquainted
with comprehensive typologies of professional stressors. We learn about the
psychosocial factors of teachers’ professional stress. In the latter part we can
read about fitting in vs. not fitting in to the teaching environment and burnout
vs. engagement. This chapter closes with a reflection on the stages, scenarios
and types of professional burn-out of teachers. Rich is the chapter and very
important. A big thumbs up for that description.
Chapter two is a classic introduction to the methodological assumptions
of own research. She has set three research goals for herself. She decided to
check how and to what extent burnout and manners of burning out can be
explained by clearly defined professional values. She declared her willingness
to check whether seniority is an indicator of the conditions of professional
burnout. She pointed out that an important direction is not only to look
for differences in levels of burnout in relation to this variable, but also for
differences in the causes leading to burnout.
The third objective is of a practical nature. The author has set herself
the task of finding a model of a tool to measure the scale of the burnout risk
due to the impact of separated work factors.
In connection with the goals set in this way, Elżbieta Lisowska posed
three specific research questions. The first concerned the relationship between
the burn-out of teachers with different internal structures and their professional
functioning in six dimensions: the dimension of psychosocial burdens; the
dimension of areas of organizational fitting in and not fitting in; the dimension
of job satisfaction; the dimension of orientation towards professional values;
198
Reviews
the dimension of sense of social mission in the profession. The second was
“whether and how the professionalization of teachers determines the indicators
of their burnout”. The third was an alternative question: “Is there a model of
teachers’ sensitivity/susceptibility to professional burnout and if so, what are
the professional and individual factors involved?”
The author also noted that the research was exploratory in nature and
did not formulate any research hypotheses. This is the correct approach. In this
arrangement of research we are dealing with a collection of different results,
e.g. from different surveys and questionnaires either connected or not. In
questionnaires or sheets examining the professional functioning of the teachers
studied, information on various features and dimensions of professional
functioning was collected. In such a case the author wanted to verify the
relationship of some variables with other variables. Thus, the situation of the
exploratory character of the study we will be dealing with when we do not
know what may come out of our study, but we have a presumption that there
are various important relationships in the collected data.
Therefore, it is worth taking note of and agreeing with the author, even
though she did not say so explicitly, that in view of the enormous complexity of
the phenomenon of professional burnout, and with the current state of research
findings, there is still room for exploratory research in this area, and there is
no reason for such research to be artificially “dressed up” as hypothesis testing.
In the latter part of the methodological chapter, E. Lisowska listed and
described the tools used. She characterized each of them very meticulously.
However, we do not learn anything about descriptive statistics, or how to
standardize variables or count subscale values. To see if I am not mistaken
in my thinking about how to examine professional burnout as proposed by
C. Maslach, I reached for the work by Janusz Kirenko and Teresa Zubrzycka-
Maciąg: “Współczesny nauczyciel. Studium wypalenia zawodowego.”
(“Contemporary teacher. A professional burnout study.”) And on pages 66
and 67 I found what I had been looking for in vain in Elżbieta Lisowska’s
work – descriptive statistics and sten ranges. Each of the Professional Burnout
subscales had a different scope: emotional burnout (0–54), Depersonalization
(0–30) and Personal Commitment (0–48). The lack of these descriptions makes
us believe that in the further part of the descriptions the author knows what
she is writing about because, as she herself wrote, she is qualified to “rectify
the data” and knows the rules of statistical description. Knowing what values
the MBI subscales can take, reading the table is somewhat easier, although
not ideal. The description I wrote about was found in chapter 5, and more
precisely in tables 39 and 40. In my opinion this is a little late.
199
Reviews
At the end of this chapter we receive information that 330 people were
taken into consideration in the study, of which 316 were teachers, of whom
261 were women and 55 were men. This incomparable and unequal number
of the examined group in terms of gender will have its consequences. In this
chapter, there is table no. 4: “Characteristics of the teachers examined due to the
analyzed professional variables”. The table would make sense if we got to know
basic descriptive statistics such as the minimum, the maximum, the median.
The author also presented the statistical procedures used. This includes cluster
analysis in the k-means grouping version. In this way, she singles out groups
with EW and BPO dominance. What does the term “dominance” itself mean? It
is hard for me to guess, especially since there are 125 people in the first group
and 185 in the second. In the group with domination of DP (depersonalization),
there were 6 teachers. And they were excluded from further analysis.
In the next – third – chapter, the author tried to find empirical
connections between professional burnout and the stages of professionalization.
She uses the cyclization of professional development as proposed by Kwaśnica,
Gaś and Dreyfus. And yet C Day’s proposition has been known for years.
According to it, she divided seniority into three stages: from one to 10 years,
from 11 to 20 and over 20 years. In general, this division allowed the author,
for example, to state that in the group of teachers with the dominance of
emotional burnout, the highest levels of emotional burnout and lack of sense
of achievement are demonstrated by teachers working from 11 to 20 years,
depersonalization appears in teachers with the longest seniority – over 20 years.
In turn, in the group dominated by a lack of sense of achievement, the highest
levels of emotional burnout and depersonalization were achieved by teachers
working for 11 to 20 years and the lowest by those working from 1 to 10 years.
There are four very data-rich tables in this chapter. For example, table 32
titled “indicators of correlation between job variables and MBI performance
of men with different seniority from the EW-dominated group” contains
over three hundred fields. They are all occupied. However, only 25 statistics
are statistically significant. The question arises why the author published
a matrix where as much as three hundred fields are statistically insignificant?
Table 33 looks slightly better, in terms of dependencies, where out of 342
possible correlations 68 are statistically significant. But the table still contains
information that I think is unnecessary.
But even more puzzling is the summary of these two tables. Here we
read: “There is an almost complete dependency between burnout and working
factors in the group of men working from 1 to 10 years.” Let us take a look at
Table 32 to understand what is going on. First of all, the very phrase “almost
200
Reviews
complete dependency” is not a statistical expressions. It is as deceptive as the
often heard phrase “on the verge of significance”. Secondly, out of 114 possible
correlations, 8 are statistically significant. The value determining significance is
the absolute value r=0.895 (at p=0.05). So what “almost complete dependency”
is this about? But further on, we can read something more puzzling: “The
determinants of burnout are the least numerous among men working for
11–20 years.” Is that true? Yes. There are 6 statistically significant relationships.
The logic of the argument here is impeccable.
However, I was most surprised by the correlations found in Table
34, where statistically significant correlations in the group of teachers with
seniority started from an absolute value of 0.678 (for p = 0.05), and in the
previously analyzed table from 0.8.
Or maybe it is true what the author wrote when interpreting table 32, only
the proofreader or editor did not see the “*” describing statistical significance.
Let us move on to logistic regression analysis. It was implemented
following the principle of step-by-step input of variables. This means more
precise analysis. The results contained in Tables 36 and 37 and their design
make their content difficult to read and follow the interpretation narrative. You
have to be careful not to make a mistake, not to miss anything. The conclusion
that comes to mind is that it could have been formulated more neatly (more
legibly). But what is important from the point of view of the analysis is that
some models explain a high percentage of variance, which means that the
variables to be analyzed have been selected correctly (for example R2 = 0.61
or R2 = 0.53) and accordingly allow to indicate the factors determining the
appearance of professional burnout in certain dimensions. In none of the nine
groups have identical sets of determinants repeated. It seems very interesting in
cognitive terms to include table no. 38 describing the professional conditions
of burnout in female teachers of different seniority. This table is a synthesis of
the conclusions of the analyses. Big applause for the author.
This chapter closes with a synthesis of the results. It reads “the results
of research to date showing the link between burnout and seniority are non-
conclusive and show that this problem can affect teachers at any stage of their
careers”. The author’s findings lead to such conclusions.
The book closes with a very important fifth chapter devoted to the
optimization of intervention in teachers’ professional burnout – setting the
objectives of interventional and prophylactic actions. The author writes that
she has resigned from looking for professional burnout profiles, their analysis
together with the determination of burnout levels, the indication of specific
factors and their influence on the burnout level, and the determination of
201
Reviews
links between the factors and burnout levels. Instead, she decided to choose
the methodology of searching for specific factors with the strongest influence
on the scale of the whole group and/or several subgroups by estimating the
strength of the hitherto influence of particular factors and the sensitivity of
the group on further influence of the factors. Only the author knows what
this chapter is about. It contains descriptions, formulas and tables. While
every researcher knows what SPSS, Statistica or SAS is, the correct definition
of SOCMA, SVA, PHA or PSA requires certain expertise in browsing the
Internet. I, personally, as a technical and non-digital person, failed to do so.
The author assumed, as I presume, that after four chapters, hardly anyone
would soldier on to read Chapter 5 and would not read what was in it.
The reader, unless they are skilled in reading confusing texts, not so much
statistical, but bordering on engineering, can go straight to the synthesis part
without any sense of loss.
The whole is concluded by the “Summary and conclusions”. We can
find everything that is important for the professional burnout topic here. This
is another daring display of the author’s erudition. You read the “Summary”
literally in one breath. It has everything that needs to be there and in the right
proportions. Maslach and Leiter followed by Elżbieta Lisowska indicate that
while examining burnout, one should simultaneously diagnose involvement
(e.g. using UWES). Then the picture should be complementary, more holistic.
Agreed, but maybe without the intricate and confusing statistics or statistical
procedures, because these are executed perfectly by the author. Well, perhaps
the groups studied should be equal as well.
After reading Elżbieta Lisowska’s book, one cannot disagree with Maslach
and Leiter’s statement that effective responses to professional burnout must
include prevention rather than therapy itself. But preventing the professional
burnout of teachers under the conditions of every system, not only the Polish one,
is an organizational revolution and requires the involvement of huge financial
resources. It is also a revolution in the academic education of future teachers.
Reaching for this book, I was seduced by the second part of the title –
“In search of an effective prophylaxis for professional burnout”. After reading,
I wonder why the author omitted prevention when C. Maslach is in favor of
effective use of prevention as well as the therapy itself. Between us, this book
ends where it should really start. But maybe I have too high expectations.
Elżbieta Lisowska’s book is an important theoretical and methodological
contribution to the unsolvable problem of professional functioning of a teacher.
However, it allows those who work with the teacher on a daily basis to acquire
the highest possible professional competence in diagnosing professional
202
Reviews
burnout and mitigating its effects (although, as she herself points out, it takes
the consent of Cristina Maslach and expertise in interpretation of results to
apply the MBI scale). It enriches the specialist diagnostic workshop, which
psychologists and therapists must not only master but continually develop
throughout their professional lives.
The book is a model of a multidisciplinary approach to pedeutological
diagnostics, which should – as in the case of social sciences – encourage
separate education of specialists supporting pedagogues in their service, but in
the light of the existing solutions in Poland, it requires the same qualifications
from themselves. Elżbieta Lisowska sets her book in the broad context of
pedagogical and psychological literature and personal counselling. It forces
the reader to treat it as a supplement or a kind of recapitulation of other
pedagogical and psychological publications that have appeared in the last thirty
years. She calls up names like: Faber, Kirenko, Kretschamnn, Leiter, Marek,
Maslach, Noworol, Plichta, Pyżalski, Madalińska-Michalak, Sęk, Tucholska or
Zubrzycka-Maciąg.
In addition, the work contains a very rich bibliography – more than four
hundred literature items, but it is in vain to look among them for literature or
literature references to the statistical or analytical methods used, especially those
described in the fifth chapter. It is also a pity that the editor of the monograph
did not make any effort to provide material and personal indices that would
allow for a purposeful return to the important issues raised in the work.
The book has another important function – psycho-pedeutological self-
reflection. One should hope that self-reflection will lead to self-education
and further self-development of the widest possible range of psychologists,
pedagogues and teachers.
I read Elżbieta Lisowska’s book in sections. The amount of information
it contained was immense. But I do not regret it. I feel enriched and know
what to look for in my future research. To sum up, I recommend the book
by Elżbieta Lisowska to professionals working within the area of prevention
and therapy of professional burnout. The book does not dispel doubts related
to effective prevention of professional burnout, but it certainly reinforces the
conviction that the burnout phenomenon will not affect teachers and people
working in social support professions quickly. And there is still a lot to do
in this area.
Krzysztof Dziurzyński
Pedagogium WSNS in Warsaw
203
velopment. Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, 61(9), 771–790.
Bowlby, J. (2007). Przywiązanie. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Main, M., Solomon, J. (1990). Procedures for Identifying Infants as Disorganized/Disoriented
during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. In: M. T. Greenberg, D. Cichetti, M. Cummings
(eds.), Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research, and intervention. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 121–161.
Horowitz, L. M, Bartholomew, K. (1991). Attachment Styles Among Young Adults – A Test Of
a Four-Category Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), pp. 226–244.
Muszyński, H. (1987). Wychowanie moralne. Warsaw: WSiP.
Renata Gardian-Miałkowska
The Stefan Batory State Higher Vocational School in Skierniewice
ORCID: 0000-0002-1063-589X
Elżbieta Lisowska
Professional condition of teachers. In search of an effective prophylaxis for
professional burnout
Oficyna Wydawnicza “Impuls”, Kraków 2018, p. 273
In Elżbieta Lisowska’s reviewed work, the first sentence opening the
reviewed monograph announces that we will be dealing with an interesting
and thought-provoking book. The author undertook the difficult task of
arranging and refining the methodology of diagnostic procedures aimed at
identifying the professional threat to teachers that professional burnout is.
The main goal undertaken by the author was to describe the fullest possible
diagnosis, which had not only a selection and qualification function, but what
is more important – interventional, closely connected with the pedagogue’s
practical activity. The task that Elżbieta Lisowska set herself was not easy, just
as the phenomenon of professional burnout is not easy. The recognition of
this phenomenon is not and cannot be an intuitive process based on common,
non-scientific knowledge, nor is it an independent activity – it is subject to
strict rules of research procedure.
The psycho-social evolution of the teaching staff in the course of their
work is determined by the ever-new expectations of the founding bodies,
the management, parents and at the same time existential uncertainty. The
general professional situation of a teacher aims at creating new premises for
negative phenomena in the teaching community. In this respect psychology,
work psychology and pedagogy have two functions: cognitive (diagnostic)
and practical (preventive and prophylactic). The former is made possible by
conducting basic research, the latter is implemented by developing conclusions
and recommendations from practical research. The book proposed to the
audience – psychologists, labor psychologists, educators and teachers – by
Elżbieta Lisowska is an example of a dissertation on the latter trend and the
197
Reviews
function of humanities and social sciences, including upbringing. Pedeutological
diagnostics serves primarily to understand the adult teacher, to intervene more
effectively, to change them and their immediate environment. This is only
possible through diagnostics carried out in accordance with methodological,
professional and ethical standards.
The book under review has a model structure. Starting from the
theoretical basis, it aims to show the professional burnout in its three
dimensions: emotional burnout, depersonalization and lack of sense of
achievement, and finally it talks about elements of prevention and prophylaxis.
The first chapter is an erudite presentation of findings in pedeutology
and psychology of labor. It is apparent that the author feels phenomenal in
this issue. We receive a rich introduction to the issue of competence. It must
be admitted that in the current literature, people writing about teachers rarely
leave this area. Then we can read about the different concepts of teaching. The
last part of this chapter deals with the professional condition of teachers. In
this section we can read about the burning out of teachers, we get acquainted
with comprehensive typologies of professional stressors. We learn about the
psychosocial factors of teachers’ professional stress. In the latter part we can
read about fitting in vs. not fitting in to the teaching environment and burnout
vs. engagement. This chapter closes with a reflection on the stages, scenarios
and types of professional burn-out of teachers. Rich is the chapter and very
important. A big thumbs up for that description.
Chapter two is a classic introduction to the methodological assumptions
of own research. She has set three research goals for herself. She decided to
check how and to what extent burnout and manners of burning out can be
explained by clearly defined professional values. She declared her willingness
to check whether seniority is an indicator of the conditions of professional
burnout. She pointed out that an important direction is not only to look
for differences in levels of burnout in relation to this variable, but also for
differences in the causes leading to burnout.
The third objective is of a practical nature. The author has set herself
the task of finding a model of a tool to measure the scale of the burnout risk
due to the impact of separated work factors.
In connection with the goals set in this way, Elżbieta Lisowska posed
three specific research questions. The first concerned the relationship between
the burn-out of teachers with different internal structures and their professional
functioning in six dimensions: the dimension of psychosocial burdens; the
dimension of areas of organizational fitting in and not fitting in; the dimension
of job satisfaction; the dimension of orientation towards professional values;
198
Reviews
the dimension of sense of social mission in the profession. The second was
“whether and how the professionalization of teachers determines the indicators
of their burnout”. The third was an alternative question: “Is there a model of
teachers’ sensitivity/susceptibility to professional burnout and if so, what are
the professional and individual factors involved?”
The author also noted that the research was exploratory in nature and
did not formulate any research hypotheses. This is the correct approach. In this
arrangement of research we are dealing with a collection of different results,
e.g. from different surveys and questionnaires either connected or not. In
questionnaires or sheets examining the professional functioning of the teachers
studied, information on various features and dimensions of professional
functioning was collected. In such a case the author wanted to verify the
relationship of some variables with other variables. Thus, the situation of the
exploratory character of the study we will be dealing with when we do not
know what may come out of our study, but we have a presumption that there
are various important relationships in the collected data.
Therefore, it is worth taking note of and agreeing with the author, even
though she did not say so explicitly, that in view of the enormous complexity of
the phenomenon of professional burnout, and with the current state of research
findings, there is still room for exploratory research in this area, and there is
no reason for such research to be artificially “dressed up” as hypothesis testing.
In the latter part of the methodological chapter, E. Lisowska listed and
described the tools used. She characterized each of them very meticulously.
However, we do not learn anything about descriptive statistics, or how to
standardize variables or count subscale values. To see if I am not mistaken
in my thinking about how to examine professional burnout as proposed by
C. Maslach, I reached for the work by Janusz Kirenko and Teresa Zubrzycka-
Maciąg: “Współczesny nauczyciel. Studium wypalenia zawodowego.”
(“Contemporary teacher. A professional burnout study.”) And on pages 66
and 67 I found what I had been looking for in vain in Elżbieta Lisowska’s
work – descriptive statistics and sten ranges. Each of the Professional Burnout
subscales had a different scope: emotional burnout (0–54), Depersonalization
(0–30) and Personal Commitment (0–48). The lack of these descriptions makes
us believe that in the further part of the descriptions the author knows what
she is writing about because, as she herself wrote, she is qualified to “rectify
the data” and knows the rules of statistical description. Knowing what values
the MBI subscales can take, reading the table is somewhat easier, although
not ideal. The description I wrote about was found in chapter 5, and more
precisely in tables 39 and 40. In my opinion this is a little late.
199
Reviews
At the end of this chapter we receive information that 330 people were
taken into consideration in the study, of which 316 were teachers, of whom
261 were women and 55 were men. This incomparable and unequal number
of the examined group in terms of gender will have its consequences. In this
chapter, there is table no. 4: “Characteristics of the teachers examined due to the
analyzed professional variables”. The table would make sense if we got to know
basic descriptive statistics such as the minimum, the maximum, the median.
The author also presented the statistical procedures used. This includes cluster
analysis in the k-means grouping version. In this way, she singles out groups
with EW and BPO dominance. What does the term “dominance” itself mean? It
is hard for me to guess, especially since there are 125 people in the first group
and 185 in the second. In the group with domination of DP (depersonalization),
there were 6 teachers. And they were excluded from further analysis.
In the next – third – chapter, the author tried to find empirical
connections between professional burnout and the stages of professionalization.
She uses the cyclization of professional development as proposed by Kwaśnica,
Gaś and Dreyfus. And yet C Day’s proposition has been known for years.
According to it, she divided seniority into three stages: from one to 10 years,
from 11 to 20 and over 20 years. In general, this division allowed the author,
for example, to state that in the group of teachers with the dominance of
emotional burnout, the highest levels of emotional burnout and lack of sense
of achievement are demonstrated by teachers working from 11 to 20 years,
depersonalization appears in teachers with the longest seniority – over 20 years.
In turn, in the group dominated by a lack of sense of achievement, the highest
levels of emotional burnout and depersonalization were achieved by teachers
working for 11 to 20 years and the lowest by those working from 1 to 10 years.
There are four very data-rich tables in this chapter. For example, table 32
titled “indicators of correlation between job variables and MBI performance
of men with different seniority from the EW-dominated group” contains
over three hundred fields. They are all occupied. However, only 25 statistics
are statistically significant. The question arises why the author published
a matrix where as much as three hundred fields are statistically insignificant?
Table 33 looks slightly better, in terms of dependencies, where out of 342
possible correlations 68 are statistically significant. But the table still contains
information that I think is unnecessary.
But even more puzzling is the summary of these two tables. Here we
read: “There is an almost complete dependency between burnout and working
factors in the group of men working from 1 to 10 years.” Let us take a look at
Table 32 to understand what is going on. First of all, the very phrase “almost
200
Reviews
complete dependency” is not a statistical expressions. It is as deceptive as the
often heard phrase “on the verge of significance”. Secondly, out of 114 possible
correlations, 8 are statistically significant. The value determining significance is
the absolute value r=0.895 (at p=0.05). So what “almost complete dependency”
is this about? But further on, we can read something more puzzling: “The
determinants of burnout are the least numerous among men working for
11–20 years.” Is that true? Yes. There are 6 statistically significant relationships.
The logic of the argument here is impeccable.
However, I was most surprised by the correlations found in Table
34, where statistically significant correlations in the group of teachers with
seniority started from an absolute value of 0.678 (for p = 0.05), and in the
previously analyzed table from 0.8.
Or maybe it is true what the author wrote when interpreting table 32, only
the proofreader or editor did not see the “*” describing statistical significance.
Let us move on to logistic regression analysis. It was implemented
following the principle of step-by-step input of variables. This means more
precise analysis. The results contained in Tables 36 and 37 and their design
make their content difficult to read and follow the interpretation narrative. You
have to be careful not to make a mistake, not to miss anything. The conclusion
that comes to mind is that it could have been formulated more neatly (more
legibly). But what is important from the point of view of the analysis is that
some models explain a high percentage of variance, which means that the
variables to be analyzed have been selected correctly (for example R2 = 0.61
or R2 = 0.53) and accordingly allow to indicate the factors determining the
appearance of professional burnout in certain dimensions. In none of the nine
groups have identical sets of determinants repeated. It seems very interesting in
cognitive terms to include table no. 38 describing the professional conditions
of burnout in female teachers of different seniority. This table is a synthesis of
the conclusions of the analyses. Big applause for the author.
This chapter closes with a synthesis of the results. It reads “the results
of research to date showing the link between burnout and seniority are non-
conclusive and show that this problem can affect teachers at any stage of their
careers”. The author’s findings lead to such conclusions.
The book closes with a very important fifth chapter devoted to the
optimization of intervention in teachers’ professional burnout – setting the
objectives of interventional and prophylactic actions. The author writes that
she has resigned from looking for professional burnout profiles, their analysis
together with the determination of burnout levels, the indication of specific
factors and their influence on the burnout level, and the determination of
201
Reviews
links between the factors and burnout levels. Instead, she decided to choose
the methodology of searching for specific factors with the strongest influence
on the scale of the whole group and/or several subgroups by estimating the
strength of the hitherto influence of particular factors and the sensitivity of
the group on further influence of the factors. Only the author knows what
this chapter is about. It contains descriptions, formulas and tables. While
every researcher knows what SPSS, Statistica or SAS is, the correct definition
of SOCMA, SVA, PHA or PSA requires certain expertise in browsing the
Internet. I, personally, as a technical and non-digital person, failed to do so.
The author assumed, as I presume, that after four chapters, hardly anyone
would soldier on to read Chapter 5 and would not read what was in it.
The reader, unless they are skilled in reading confusing texts, not so much
statistical, but bordering on engineering, can go straight to the synthesis part
without any sense of loss.
The whole is concluded by the “Summary and conclusions”. We can
find everything that is important for the professional burnout topic here. This
is another daring display of the author’s erudition. You read the “Summary”
literally in one breath. It has everything that needs to be there and in the right
proportions. Maslach and Leiter followed by Elżbieta Lisowska indicate that
while examining burnout, one should simultaneously diagnose involvement
(e.g. using UWES). Then the picture should be complementary, more holistic.
Agreed, but maybe without the intricate and confusing statistics or statistical
procedures, because these are executed perfectly by the author. Well, perhaps
the groups studied should be equal as well.
After reading Elżbieta Lisowska’s book, one cannot disagree with Maslach
and Leiter’s statement that effective responses to professional burnout must
include prevention rather than therapy itself. But preventing the professional
burnout of teachers under the conditions of every system, not only the Polish one,
is an organizational revolution and requires the involvement of huge financial
resources. It is also a revolution in the academic education of future teachers.
Reaching for this book, I was seduced by the second part of the title –
“In search of an effective prophylaxis for professional burnout”. After reading,
I wonder why the author omitted prevention when C. Maslach is in favor of
effective use of prevention as well as the therapy itself. Between us, this book
ends where it should really start. But maybe I have too high expectations.
Elżbieta Lisowska’s book is an important theoretical and methodological
contribution to the unsolvable problem of professional functioning of a teacher.
However, it allows those who work with the teacher on a daily basis to acquire
the highest possible professional competence in diagnosing professional
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burnout and mitigating its effects (although, as she herself points out, it takes
the consent of Cristina Maslach and expertise in interpretation of results to
apply the MBI scale). It enriches the specialist diagnostic workshop, which
psychologists and therapists must not only master but continually develop
throughout their professional lives.
The book is a model of a multidisciplinary approach to pedeutological
diagnostics, which should – as in the case of social sciences – encourage
separate education of specialists supporting pedagogues in their service, but in
the light of the existing solutions in Poland, it requires the same qualifications
from themselves. Elżbieta Lisowska sets her book in the broad context of
pedagogical and psychological literature and personal counselling. It forces
the reader to treat it as a supplement or a kind of recapitulation of other
pedagogical and psychological publications that have appeared in the last thirty
years. She calls up names like: Faber, Kirenko, Kretschamnn, Leiter, Marek,
Maslach, Noworol, Plichta, Pyżalski, Madalińska-Michalak, Sęk, Tucholska or
Zubrzycka-Maciąg.
In addition, the work contains a very rich bibliography – more than four
hundred literature items, but it is in vain to look among them for literature or
literature references to the statistical or analytical methods used, especially those
described in the fifth chapter. It is also a pity that the editor of the monograph
did not make any effort to provide material and personal indices that would
allow for a purposeful return to the important issues raised in the work.
The book has another important function – psycho-pedeutological self-
reflection. One should hope that self-reflection will lead to self-education
and further self-development of the widest possible range of psychologists,
pedagogues and teachers.
I read Elżbieta Lisowska’s book in sections. The amount of information
it contained was immense. But I do not regret it. I feel enriched and know
what to look for in my future research. To sum up, I recommend the book
by Elżbieta Lisowska to professionals working within the area of prevention
and therapy of professional burnout. The book does not dispel doubts related
to effective prevention of professional burnout, but it certainly reinforces the
conviction that the burnout phenomenon will not affect teachers and people
working in social support professions quickly. And there is still a lot to do
in this area.
Krzysztof Dziurzyński
Pedagogium WSNS in Warsaw
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