Language Teacher Burnout

Abstract

Burnout is a psychological syndrome which entails a long-term response to work stressors (Maslach in Current Directions in Psychological Strain 12:189–192, 2003).

Appendices

The Research Questions

• 1. What are the factors contributing to burnout among EFL teachers?

• 2. What can teachers and teacher education programs do to reduce burnout levels among EFL learners?

• 3. What is the role of language proficiency and pedagogical knowledge in EFL teacher burnout?

• 4. What components of language proficiency are predictors of low burnout levels?

• 5. What contextual and cultural factors can lead to burnout among EFL learners?

• 6. What is the impact of EFL teacher burnout on students’ performance?

• 7. Is there any relationship between teacher-student rapport and teacher burnout?

• 8. What is the role of teachers’ assessment-related beliefs and their experience of burnout?

• 9. What is the role of newly-introduced educational technologies and EFL teachers’ burnout?

• 10. Which dimension(s) of burnout is/are more prominent among EFL teachers and what can be done to reduce them?

Suggested Resources

Byrne, B. M. (1993). Burnout: Testing for the validity, replication, and invariance of causal structure across elementary, intermediate, and secondary teachers. American Educational Research Journal 31(3), 645–673.

The study investigated the impact of organizational (role ambiguity, role conflict, work overload, classroom climate, decision making, superior support, peer support) and personality (self-esteem, external locus of control) factors on three facets of burnout—-Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and reduced Personal Accomplishment within one conceptual framework. Participants were full-time elementary (n = 1203), intermediate (n = 410), and secondary teachers (n = 1431). A hypothesized model of burnout was first tested and cross validated for each teaching panel; common causal paths were then tested for group-invariance. Results were consistent across groups in revealing the importance of (a) role conflict, work overload, classroom climate, decision making, and peer support as organizational determinants of teacher burnout, (b) self-esteem and external locus of control as important mediators of teacher burnout, and (c) the absence of role ambiguity and superior support in the causal process. Findings demonstrated that interpretations of burnout as a undimensional construct are not meaningful.

Cano-Garcia, F. J., Padilla-Munoz, E. M. & Carrasco-Ortiz, M. A. (2005). Personality and contextual variables in teacher burnout. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 929–940.

Although several papers have shown the importance of personality structure in the disposition to burnout, its role remains controversial, especially in relation to contextual variables of an organizational and environmental type. In this sense, the authors have first considered describing and then predicting the burnout levels of 99 teachers in the province of Seville (Spain). In addition to a structured, self-applied interview, they used the Spanish adaptation of the reduced version of NEO-PI-R (NEO-FFI) (Costa & McCrae, 1999). Homogeneity Analysis and Multiple Linear Regression (SPSS 11) were used. The results indicate the important role of personality structure in combination with some of the selected contextual variables, both in the description and prediction of teacher burnout. Most results confirm what has been achieved in similar research, and they especially emphasize the role of agreeableness as a protective factor (high scores) and, at the same time, as a vulnerability factor (low scores). These results are discussed from the perspective of interaction between disposition and contextual variables.

Schaufeli, W. B., Leiter, M. P. & Maslach, C. (2009). Burnout: 35 years of research and Practice. Career Development International. 14(3), 204–220.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the concept of burnout concept itself, rather than reviewing research findings on burnout. The paper presents an overview of the concept of burnout. The roots of the burnout concept seem to be embedded within broad social, economic, and cultural developments that took place in the last quarter of the past century and signify the rapid and profound transformation from an industrial society into a service economy. This social transformation goes along with psychological pressures that may translate into burnout. After the turn of the century, burnout is increasingly considered as an erosion of a positive psychological state. Although burnout seems to be a global phenomenon, the meaning of the concept differs between countries. For instance, in some countries burnout is used as a medical diagnosis, whereas in other countries it is a non-medical, socially accepted label that carries a minimum stigma in terms of a psychiatric diagnosis. The paper documents that the exact meaning of the concept of burnout varies with its context and the intentions of those using the term.

Maslach. C. & Leiter, M. P. (2008) Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 3, 498–512.

A longitudinal study predicted changes in burnout or engagement a year later by identifying 2 types of early indicators at the initial assessment. Organizational employees (N_ 466) completed measures of burnout and 6 areas of work life at 2 times with a 1-year interval. Those people who showed an inconsistent pattern at Time 1 were more likely to change over the year than were those who did not. Among this group, those who also displayed a workplace incongruity in the area of fairness moved to burnout at Time 2, while those without this incongruity moved toward engagement. The implications of these 2 predictive indicators are discussed in terms of the enhanced ability to customize interventions for targeted groups within the workplace.

Nayernia, A. & Babayan, Z. (2019). EFL teacher burnout and self-assessed language proficiency: exploring possible relationships. Language Testing in Asia, 9. 3.

Although teacher burnout has drawn the attention of many researchers, there is little empirical evidence for the contribution of non-native English language teachers’ language proficiency level to their experience of burnout. To address this significant gap, the present study examined the relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ self-assessed language proficiency and their experience of burnout. Research has indicated that personal resources of teachers can function as protectors against their experience of burnout. Thus, it was assumed that investigating how EFL teachers’ level of burnout can be reduced through language proficiency as a personal resource can cast a new light on the role of personal resources in reducing teachers’ experience of burnout. To this end, data were collected from 110 Iranian EFL teachers who were teaching in private language institutes through the Maslach Burnout Inventory—Educator Survey and Iranian EFL Teacher Self-Reported Language Proficiency Scale. The correlational analysis revealed that language proficiency had a significant negative relationship with the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization dimensions and a significant positive relationship with the personal accomplishment dimension of burnout. The results of regression analysis also indicated that, except for the reading subskill, all the other proficiency subskills were the best predictors of the different dimensions of burnout. Based on the findings of the current study, some pedagogical implications and research suggestions were also proposed.