WWW Resource Report

Studies on Teacher Burnout

Burnout as an individual negative affective experience occurring as a result of chronic work stress has became prominent in the teaching professional literature since the mid-1970s. There is a general view that teacher burnout may have a negative impact on the teachers themselves leading, for instance, to emotional and physical ill-health, and on the students as burnout teachers may be relatively impaired in the quality of teaching and commitment, may give less information and less praise and interact less work students. As a result, pressure to identify important factors contributing to teacher burnout and particular attention has been directed to studying the activities and strategies that teachers employ to cope with stress and burnout.

In Hong Kong, teaching is a particularly stressful occupation with negative aspects such as unmotivated and difficult students, decreasing resources, larger class sizes, and rigid administration practices. Hence, psychological burnout may easily occur, represented by deteriorating work performance, negative psychological and physical conditions. Also, this is one of the reasons why I have left the profession for other careers. Besides, this has become the assignment topic of my own interest and I have picked out five web pages about this.

Among these five studies, Burke’s longitudinal study on predicting teacher burnout over time may be a quite different one and worth mentioning. It examined antecedents and consequences of psychological-burnout among 362 teachers and school administrators. The analysis began with a description of burnout levels, comparing women and men as well as teachers and school administrators. Teacher burnout was assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the most widely-used research instrument developed by Maslach and Jackson. The MBI has three subscales that assess different components of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being emotionally overextended and drained by others. Depersonalization refers to a callous response toward people who are the recipient of one’s services. Reduced personal accomplishment refers to a decline in one’s feelings of competence and successful achievement in one’s work with people. The three-factor structure of this instrument has been confirmed in numerous studies.

The antecedents of burnout investigated in the study included red tape, disruptive students, self-doubts and lack of supervisor supports. Then, consequences of burnout, including heart symptoms and depressive mood, were examined. In the study, respondents completed questionnaires sent to them at their schools at two points in time, one year apart. As for the results, two sections were set, the first of which examined mean differences in burnout for gender and occupational subgroups (i.e., teachers and administrators). Then second section evaluated a causal model of potential influences on burnout over time, first for the total sample, then for each of the gender and occupational subgroups.

Findings of this study reviewed that for men, the best predictors of burnout were red tape work and self-doubts, whereas for women disruptive students emerged as best predictor of burnout measured one year later. On the other hand, administrator burnout was mainly due to red tape, and teacher burnout was primarily predicted by stress caused by disruptive students, followed by lack of social integration and red tape.

Generally speaking, the data obtained in this study were in line with results from several other studies. For example, male respondents of this study had higher scores then females on depersonalization and emotional exhaustion subscales. Also, Maslach & Jackson(1989) had reported in their research that higher depersonalization was found in male public contact employees when compared to female contact employees. Furthermore, other data in Burke’s study indicated that teachers had higher burnout levels than school administrators except for the Personal Accomplishment component.

Empirically, the data indicated that predictors of burnout depended primarily on one’s social roles including the occupational role which was often confounded with gender. Considering the health consequences of burnout, the strongest association of burnout was with depressive mood. Simultaneously, research on the discriminant validity of both concepts showed that particularly emotional exhaustion is substantively related to depression.

Perhaps the main contribution of the study lay in the confirmation of a dynamic path model that included latent variables at two points in time. In other words, it confirmed burnout as a process that developed over time, in this study, one year. Hence the results had significant implications for the design of intervention procedures which could be aimed at the modification of stressors at an earlier time in order to alleviate a teacher’s burnout one year later.

Another research conducted by Farber & Ascher considered the impact of several components of school restructuring on teacher burnout. In the best case, School-based management empowers teachers to develop the process and goals of educational, and enhances their sense of professionalism. Yet SBM also can seem distant from the day-to-day problems of most teachers, and even increase burnout among some of them.

Other components of school restructuring such as accountability, career ladders, schools-within-schools, curriculum initiatives, flexible scheduling and team teaching, have the potential of improving the context of teaching. Nevertheless, none affects such district policies as pupil assignment, professional development, or evaluation, all of which are critical to teachers’ well-being. None ensures that teachers will be involved in decision-making or work with their peers --- or that they will feel empowered by their added responsibilities. Except for the curriculum initiatives, none necessarily improves teaching and learning, the best way to decrease burnout.

A Japanese study on teacher burnout was done in the Osaka area in late 1994. Quite differently, the researcher adopted A.M. Paine’s burnout score to measure the syndrome of teacher burnout. The average score obtained was 3.37 which meant danger signal for the burnout syndrome. Important factors for the syndrome were healthy condition, working overtime at home, regretting teaching experiences, worries about their own children, expectation of parents, job satisfaction, the degree of hardship of the work situation, and overtime working spent for tests preparation or evaluation. The interesting findings of this study was that both teachers who didn’t look at themselves as respected professionals at all and who did very much were burned out when compared with other neutral groups.

Pruaner, a German psychologist, had made a very interesting study on teacher burnout by investigating the associations between burnout, locus of control and early morning free cortisol levels in teachers. In this study, teachers had to complete the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Teacher Burnout Scale, the Freiburg Symptom Check List for assessing the level of bodily complaints, and the Questionnaire of Competence and Control for information on locus of control. Additionally, all subjects sampled saliva at the time of awakening, and 15, 30 and 60 minutes thereafter for analysis of free cortisol levels on three school days. Evaluation of the parameters revealed close correlations between the number of bodily complaints, locus of control and the degree of burnout found in the teachers. Besides, in the high burnout group early morning cortisol levels of the first two days were found to be significantly lower compared to the low burnout group. Also, dexamethasone suppression resulted in lower cortisol levels in the high burnout group.

A local study examined the relationship of occupational stress, Type A personality, and social support with the three aspects of teacher burnout, emotional exhaustion depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. The results revealed that teachers who were single, of graduate status, and with fewer years of teaching experience had a higher level of burnout. Moreover, teachers experiencing more stress, lacking in social support were more burned out. Personality type was found to exert both a main and buffering effects on burnout. Type A teachers were less burned out and less adversely affected by the harmful effects of stress. In addition, ways to cope with stress and burnout were also suggested to help alleviate teacher burnout. However, efforts spent on these measures were not sufficient and the ways suggested were not sophisticated enough to reduce teacher burnout syndrome.

In Hong Kong, as the teaching profession is one of the largest and most visible professions, teacher burnout has generated great concerns among school officials and educators. Wong(1989), for example, lamented that 40 percent of his sample of secondary school teachers reported preparing to leave the teaching profession, which was significantly predicted by dissatisfaction stemming from the stressful nature of teaching. He concluded that the large proportion of uncommitted teachers may jeopardise the teaching effectiveness of the school system. Also, the tripartite components of burnout and eight coping strategies were assessed in a sample of 415 Chinese secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. While emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were relatively undifferentiated among these teachers, a reduced sense of accomplishment as a distinct component of burnout was generally reported. The findings that avoidant coping strategies were consistently related to all three aspects of burnout suggested that teachers employing escape-avoidance to cope with stressors might be more prose to burnout.

In reality, many factors, including those mentioned above, are likely to contribute to the development of burnout. These can be grouped into three broad categories, namely, personal, interpersonal and organizational factors. The individual factors which may contribute to burnout include certain personality traits and background characteristics. For the individual teacher, feelings of burnout may result in both psychological and physical dysfunction and this may reflected in feelings of exhaustion, depression and irritability, increased use of alcohol and medication, and increased susceptibility to illness.

At the interpersonal level the question of interest is directed at looking at the impact on teachers of the social environment. The nature of teachers‘ involvement with students, colleagues, parents and members of the community are posited to affect self-perceptions of burnout. If teachers experience tensions and difficulties associated with this involvement, then this may be reflected in their behavior towards others.

Third, at the organizational level, ways in which the school setting contributes to burnout include a lack of clarity in the definition of teachers‘ duties, vague rules and regulations, large classes, poor availability of resources, cramped working conditions and lack of privacy. The effects of burnout at the school level may be reflected in staff turnover, absenteeism and teacher dissatisfaction. Employer contributions to burnout include poor communication and implementing decisions which affect teachers without having consulted them, inflexible policies on staffing and leave, inadequate teacher welfare services, and a general lack of formal support systems for teachers. The effects of burnout at the employer level may include high resignation rates with a consequent loss of trained and experienced teachers, increased numbers of “leave without pay” applications and workers’ compensation claims.

Once these studies identified the major burnout factors, they have also indicated burnout is a real problem. Moreover, they have implications for promoting certain patterns of coping to combat burnout. Cognitive restructuring and positively reappraising the situation may help alleviate physical and emotional exhaustion, and enhance a sense of personal achievement. Further, the readiness to seek support from others may help teachers guard against becoming depersonalized, and the use of task-related and interpersonal problem-solving may also increase the sense of personal achievement. To date, pressure to find solutions to this problem has intensified and particular attention has been directed to studying the activities and strategies that teachers employ to cope with burnout.

Empirical findings from the above studies have identified, validated, crossvalidated, and equated a nomological network of burnout for and across three panels of teachers. As such, they have provided a foundation upon which to build a theoretical model of burnout. Future construct validity work is now needed to confirm or disconfirm these findings in the long and tedious pursuit of a sound and testable theory of burnout as it relates to the teaching profession.