Exploring the Responsibilities, Boundaries, and Well-Being of Teachers in the Philippines

Teacher identity is a multidimensional construct that includes elements such as teachers’ perceptions of their responsibilities and the boundaries they place on those responsibilities. The purpose of this study was to examine how elements of teacher identity, specifically their perceived responsibilities and the boundaries they place on their responsibilities, are related to teacher well-being. Individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 teachers in the Philippines. Teachers were asked about their perceptions of their responsibilities, where they draw the boundaries on what they are responsible for, and their feelings of stress and burnout. A grounded theory approach was used to develop a coding scheme and code the interview transcripts. The results revealed that most of the teachers in the sample felt responsible for promoting both academic and social–moral development in their students but created boundaries that prevented them from prying into students’ personal lives and helped them maintain professional boundaries. Unlike many teachers in the U.S., few of the teachers in the Filipino sample expressed high levels of burnout or a desire to leave the profession. We argue that cultural differences in the way teachers define their roles and responsibilities may explain the differences in the burnout levels of teachers in the U.S. compared to those of teachers in the Philippines. Lessons learned from how teachers with low levels of burnout define their roles and responsibilities can be used to help teachers at risk of burning out reframe their role identities.