TPC Journal V8, Issue 3- FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 3 287 less clinical supervision had higher burnout scores. The findings identify the importance of clinical supervision to reduce burnout among school counselors, helping them improve their quality of counseling, which in turn may increase their sense of competence in the workplace. Bain and colleagues (2011) investigated the mental health of school counselors in a rural setting and their percentage of workweek spent on counseling and administrative duties in South Texas ( N = 27). Within this sample of school counselors, 89% had experienced feelings of burnout at least sometimes when trying to provide mental health services; specifically, 41% reported feelings of burnout, and 48% sometimes experienced burnout when providing mental health services to their students. School counselors also reported that they spent the greatest amount of time completing administrative duties and the least amount of time providing counseling services. About 48% of the counselors used more than 50% of their time completing administrative duties, such as organizing facts to report to administrators and preparing for assessments of knowledge and skills, and more than 70% of the participants spent less than 50% of their time providing counseling services. The sample size for this study was small; nevertheless, the results identified that approximately 90% of the school counselors experienced some levels of burnout and spent less time providing counseling services to their students and other stakeholders than completing administrative duties. Finally, Mullen and Gutierrez (2016) investigated the relationship between burnout and direct student services of school counselors ( N = 926). The results indicated that burnout negatively contributed to the frequency of direct counseling activities ( ß = -.35, p < .001), direct curriculum activities ( ß = -.22, p < .001), and percentage of time at work providing direct services to students ( ß = -.24, p < .001). The findings suggest that school counselors experiencing feelings of burnout are likely to have lower numbers of direct counseling activities and curriculum activities, and spend less time offering direct services to students. Work environment factors. School counselors’ levels of burnout may be different depending on the location of their workplace (Butler & Constantine, 2005). Specifically, school counselors working in urban settings scored higher on the EE subscale as compared to counselors in suburban, rural, and other settings ( F (3, 529) = 24.66, p < .001). In addition, counselors in urban settings had higher DP subscale scores than those in other environmental settings ( F (3, 529) = 13.67, p < .001). The results may relate to unique stressors school counselors in the urban settings face, including their expected proficiency in working with diverse students (Constantine et al., 2001). Overall, school counselors in urban settings were likely to experience greater feelings of burnout than those counselors in other settings, suggesting that more research is warranted to better understand possible contributors to these educators having higher MBI scores. Factors relating to school counselors’ work correlating with their feelings of burnout include counselors’ caseloads, AYP status, principal support, and non-counseling duties. Specifically, school- related factors for counselors explained the variance of four burnout subscales of the CBI (Bardhoshi et al., 2014): (a) 21% of the variance in Exhaustion scores was explained (large effect size; R 2 = 0.21, p < .001); (b) 9% of the variance in Incompetence scores was explained (medium effect size; R 2 = 0.09, p < .01); (c) 49% of the variance in NWE scores was explained (large effect size; R 2 = 0.49, p < .001); and (d) 17% of the variance in DPL scores was explained (large effect size; R 2 = 0.17, p < .001). As a result, both school counselors’ work-related factors, such as caseloads and non-counseling duties, and their school environment (support from school staff and AYP status) correlate to their feelings of burnout. Therefore, providing sufficient support for school counselors, meeting the AYP, and reducing caseloads and non-counseling duties might mitigate feelings of burnout among school counselors.