Burnout In Teachers: Causes, Symptoms, And Solutions

Symptoms of Burnout in Teachers

Discuss about the Interpersonal Relationships on Burnout Syndrome.

Burnout is a common word which could be associated with any profession. It could be referred to as any situation where an individual is overworked and underpaid. The prolonged stress arising out of burnout could result in a number of complications within the affected person. The burnout is mainly characterised by stress overburden, emotional and physical fatigue. As mentioned by Cherniss (2016), workplace burnout can often make an individual feel isolated or overworked. The mental pressure and agitation can affect the physical well being of an individual. The prolonged stress can affect the overall job performance of an individual.

In the current study, we have taken into consideration the burnout faced by teachers. The teachers have to constantly meet with the demands placed by the students as well as satisfy the organizational roles placed upon them. The lack of resources for meeting with the job demands often induces mental stress upon the teachers. The developing stress reduces the feeling of accomplishment and self worth within an individual.

The symptoms of burnout within a teacher could be associated with three different factors which are – emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and personal accomplishment. The emotional exhaustion is expressed by lack of interest in teaching and constantly blaming the student or the institution as a whole for the lack of success.

Depersonalisation is marked by isolation and spending of less time with colleagues or sharing of personal thoughts with workplace associates.  As mentioned by Yu  et al. (2015), depersonalisation favours a negative work culture. This kind of workplace environment is often associated with high staff turnover rate.

The teachers suffering from burn out often suffer from low self esteem and have low self goals.  The professional jealousy arising out of workplace culture often adds to personal and emotional frustrations.  Emotional, physical and cognitive exhaustion have been often associated with workplace burnout. Some of the symptoms which are mostly commonly noted within an individual  suffering from burnout is the loss of sleep along with complaining about every small job roles or responsibilities rendered upon them.

In business organizations burnout is seen as a management issue. The cause of which is often taken up by the human resources. Some of the business organizations have been seen to conduct staff meetings regularly. This is done in order to address the grievances of the staff where the employees are provided options like more involvement in decision making, coaching, and training and growth opportunities. However, as mentioned by Lindqvist  et al. (2018), effective employee management activities are lacking in schools. As suggested by Wang  et al. (2015), the sharing of responsibilities and approval of colleagues matter the most within a professional environment.

The Impact of Burnout on Teachers

Some of the most common reasons which have been cited for demoralization within the teachers are low pay, less chances for the implementation of creative teaching and learning skills.  As mentioned by Lindqvist  et al. (2018),  one of  the major reasons  for the teachers feeling less oriented in their job roles was due to administrative confusion. Most of the teachers reported that they were bogged down with constant criticism from the management that there way of functioning was wrong.

The statistics point towards more alarming figures and needs immediate attention. As reported by Rojas-Flores et al.  (2015), 40-50% of the teachers leave their profession at the fifth year of their service. They have cited multiple reasons for the same which ranges from long working hours, lack of autonomy, large size of classes along with inadequate resources to facilitate learning. As reported by Shaheen and Mahmood (2016), 61% of  teachers put extra 13 working hours per week, which is higher compared to other professions. The lack of resources prevents the dedicated teachers to help their student in achieving the extra mile. On top of that an unsupportive management further add to the grievances by leading to confused job roles.  As mentioned by Colomeischi (2015), most of the teachers end up leaving their profession owing to self preservation. Some of the factors which can work as good as a teacher retention policy are increase in the pay of the teachers, payment of incentives or bonuses, enrolling the teachers into active training sessions. Some of these help in the enhancement of skills within the teachers, as a result of which they feel better absorbed in the place.

The issues which are faced within the teaching profession have been highlighted within the global and national context.  A number of steps have been undertaken over here for increasing the absorption and retention of individuals within the teaching profession. Some of the startegies which have been employed within the domestic academic market are signing bonuses or high salaries to retain the individuals within the profession. As suggested by Al-Asadi  et al. (2018), loan subsidy programs have also been effective in high recruitment of teachers within the countries such as Australia.  The teacher turnover has harmful effect on overall student achievement and the quality of education delivered in the schools. The financial losses are huge with respect of midsession dropout of teachers. The total cost of replacing public school teachers added up to almost $2.2 billion in the year 2001 within the United States (Rojas-Flores et al. 2012). One of the major causes which have been identified globally for the high turnover rate among the teachers is lack of a supportive management. Additionally, effective human resource policies are often missed out in schools. Hence, sufficient research needs to be conducted for identification of the factors of teacher attrition.

Causes of Burnout in Teachers

One of the challenges which are faced with regards to the recruitment of teachers from expatriate locations is coping up with the culture and the language differences. As mentioned by Yorulmaz et al. (2017), the loss of familiar signs and symbols along with the change in parental expectations put a lot of pressure upon the teaching faculty. On the other hand, some other researchers have pointed out that job satisfaction among the Canadian teachers is high compared to others.  In many situations teachers who have moved out of their   native place to foreign locations have reported better infrastructural support compared to the ones located in domestic locations. One of the major barriers which are faced over here are with regards to delivery of proper education in foreign locations are multilingualism along with the international curriculum. It has been noted that the teachers trained as per the national curriculum fail to meet the international educational guidelines and criteria.

The   method of imparting of education is often dictated by the curriculum style or pattern.  In most of the cases the creative educational design has been replaced by a conservative curriculum. The critical, political and sociological examination of education has been replaced by the traditional course printed teaching.  It produces little interest within the students as well as the teachers, as learning is replaced by meeting with exam deadlines. The methodical approach to teaching and learning often hampers the quality of education delivered. The teachers are mostly bogged down with the burden of completing the syllabus and get little or no time to provide the students with remedial measures.

The changing demand of the parents along with little support from the management leads to the development of fatigue within the teachers. As mentioned by Rodríguez-Mantilla and Fernández-Díaz (2017), the teachers are seen as individuals who are entrusted with the responsibilities of completing the curriculum designed for the students. In this respect, little time or liberty is provided to the teachers to focus on individual learning and enrich self practices by taking up multidimensional approaches to learning.

The teaching practices vary as per different regions and cultures, a few of which have been discussed over here. As mentioned by Shaheen and Mahmood (2016), high   rates of absenteeism have been noted within the African context of education.  Some of the underlying causes which have  been found  for the same are poverty, poor health, etc. the poor  health  condition of  children have  impaired  them from  attending schools, as  a result the attendance is low.

Solutions for Burnout in Teachers

Due to poor attendance, the teacher loses their interest in teaching. As mentioned by Yorulmaz  et al. (2015), situations of poverty have also laid to indiscriminate cost cutting in schools. Additionally, lack of awareness regarding the educational policies implemented by government and federal government agencies further affect the educational practices and teacher retention rates.

Conclusion

The current assignment takes into consideration the issues of burnout in teachers. Burnout in teachers has gathered global attention as many teachers have been leaving their jobs owing to stress, overwork burden and low pay. The issues have been investigated on a global and national context.  It had been found that inadequate administrative setup along with limited infrastructure have delimited the teachers from interacting creatively with the students and enhance the overall quality of the educational services.  Some of these limitations have also been seen to affect personal goal and ambitions and leads to higher level of dissatisfaction in teaching.

References

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Cherniss, C., 2016. Beyond burnout: Helping teachers, nurses, therapists and lawyers recover from stress and disillusionment. Routledge.

Colomeischi, A.A., 2015. Teachers Burnout in Relation with Their Emotional Intelligence and Personality Traits. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 180, pp.1067-1073.

Lindqvist, H., Weurlander, M., Wernerson, A. and Thornberg, R., 2018. Talk of Teacher Burnout among Student Teachers. In 2018 Annual Meeting of AERA, New York, USA.

Rodríguez-Mantilla, J.M. and Fernández-Díaz, M., 2017. The effect of interpersonal relationships on burnout syndrome in Secondary Education teachers. Psicothema, 29(3).

Rojas-Flores, L., Herrera, S., Currier, J.M., Foster, J.D., Putman, K.M., Roland, A. and Foy, D.W., 2015. Exposure to violence, posttraumatic stress, and burnout among teachers in El Salvador: Testing a mediational model. International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, 4(2), p.98.

Shaheen, F. and Mahmood, N., 2016. Demographic Variables as Determinants of Emotional Burnout among Public School Teachers. Journal of Research & Reflections in Education (JRRE), 10(1).

Wang, Y., Ramos, A., Wu, H., Liu, L., Yang, X., Wang, J. and Wang, L., 2015. Relationship between occupational stress and burnout among Chinese teachers: a cross-sectional survey in Liaoning, China. International archives of occupational and environmental health, 88(5), pp.589-597.

Yorulmaz, Y.I., Colak, I. and Altinkurt, Y., 2017. A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Teachers’ Job Satisfaction and Burnout. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 71, pp.175-192.

Yu, X., Wang, P., Zhai, X., Dai, H. and Yang, Q., 2015. The effect of work stress on job burnout among teachers: The mediating role of self-efficacy. Social Indicators Research, 122(3), pp.701-708.