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EFL teachers’ burnout and individual psychology: The effect of an empowering program and cognitive restructuring techniques

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Abstract

In this study, an interventional program based on Individual Psychology was proposed and examined to empower teachers with burnout symptoms. The participants were 54 EFL English language teachers with various professional profiles diagnosed with burnout symptoms. Using a quasi-experimental design, the experimental group went through an empowering program with empowering themes as well as cognitive restructuring techniques to facilitate emotional and cognitive change with behavioral consequences. We evaluated the effects of the program through the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Achievement Motivation Test (AMT). Results indicated the positive and immediate effects of the program in alleviating and treating burnout symptoms. However, the program demonstrated weak durability effects in follow-up tests, and this substantiates the need for tests of continuous and in-service training to evaluate long-term outcomes. Further implications regarding teachers and administrators have been discussed.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author and with the permission of the institutes, which collaborated in this study. The data are not publicly available due to the data protection policy of the institutes and research participant privacy/consent.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Mohsenzadeh, Dr. Ghasemi, and Dr. Tafakkor for their invaluable insights and assistance in this study. Also, I am thankful to the participants who kindly devoted their time and energy, and the principals of the institutes who made this study possible. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.

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  1. Urmia University, Urmia, Iran

    Farshad Ghasemi

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  1. Farshad Ghasemi
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Correspondence to Farshad Ghasemi.

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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Ghasemi, F. EFL teachers’ burnout and individual psychology: The effect of an empowering program and cognitive restructuring techniques. Curr Psychol 42, 295–306 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01368-5

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