Abstract
This study explores teachers' compassion fatigue in teaching through an exploratory mixed-method design. The approach involves an initial qualitative phase followed by a quantitative phase, with a final integration of data from both phases. More specifically, it aimed to construct, develop and evaluate the dimensions of teachers’ compassion fatigue in teaching scale. In the qualitative phase, there were seven teachers who participated in the in-depth interview and ten teachers participated in the focus group discussion. There were five themes that emerged from the interview that put emphasis on workload and stress, lack of resources and support, student behavior and discipline challenges, emotional engagement and investment, and lack of autonomy and control. A 90-item new approaches of teaching scale was also constructed based from the results of the interview, which was subjected to the quantitative phase. In the quantitative phase, 200 questionnaire responses were analyzed for exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Results showed five underlying dimensions of teachers’ compassion fatigue in teaching. The study found high internal consistency among the five factors, with Emotional Engagement and Investment, Lack of Autonomy and Control, and Lack of resources and support, Student behavior and discipline challenges, and Workload and Stress demonstrating commendable to perfect reliability (α = 0.957 to 1.000). The overall Cronbach's Alpha is 0.885. A total of five themes on dimensions of teachers’ compassion fatigue in teaching questionnaire was developed which are emotional engagement and investment with a total of twenty-two items, lack of resources and support with a total of twelve items, student behavior and discipline challenges with a total of seventeen items, lack of resources and support with a total of twelve items, workload and stress with a total of twenty items, and lack of autonomy and control with a total of thirteen items and the overall the scale has a total of 84-item questionnaire. This study recommends that educational institutions prioritize the implementation of interventions aimed at mitigating factors contributing to compassion fatigue among teachers.
Keywords: Compassion Fatigue, Teachers, Exploratory Sequential Design, Factor Analysis, Kidapawan City, Philippines