Burn-out among Israeli Arab school principals as a function of professional identity and interpersonal relationships with teachers

The study was aimed at shedding light on burn-out among Arab school principals in Israel by investigating its relationship to the principals' professional identity and their interpersonal relationships with their teachers. The sample consisted of 88 Israeli Arab school principals, a group of professionals whose burn-out was investigated for the first time in this study, and of 517 of their teachers. The principals were selected randomly from the total population of Arab school principals. The study instruments comprised three questionnaires that had been used in previous studies, where they had been tested for reliability. The results indicate a relatively low degree of burn-out experienced by the Arab school principals in general, and in comparison with school principals in the Jewish educational sector in particular. The variance in burn-out was explained to a statistically significant degree by professional identity and by a number of gaps between the principals' perceptions of actual and desired interpersonal relationships. The results are discussed with regard to psycho-sociological and cultural aspects.