Abstract

Teachers’ burnout is a chronic state of exhaustion of emotions, attitudes and behaviors owing to long-term stress, that is to say, an extreme reaction to the failure of dealing with working stress. Teachers’ burnout can destroy their satisfaction of teaching and do great harm to their health. Besides great harm to teachers’ physical and mental health, burnout also leads to the decline in teaching quality and indifference to students which negatively affect students’ development. Therefore, studies on teachers’ burnout contribute a lot to the development of teachers. Much research has been done about junior high school teachers’ burnout since the new term “burnout”was first introduced in 1974, but limited studies focus on junior high school English teachers. Junior high school teachers are often discussed together with primary school teachers or high school teachers. This study aims to find out the general burnout level of junior high school English teachers, as well as some key factors that affect their burnout level. The data come from the questionnaire and interview. The major findings are summarized as follows. 

Firstly, the results indicate that the burnout level of junior high school English teachers is quite high. And among the three dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment) the most obvious symptom is emotional exhaustion. 

Secondly, there are total nine factors that affect the teachers’ burnout level mentioned in this study, but eight of them are proved to have influences. The eight factors can be divided into three categories: personal factors, occupational factors and social factors. The gender, age, working duration and lack of communicators are personal factors. The working complexity and the grade that teachers are teaching are occupational factors. Students’ attitudes, others’ restrictions, too high expectation are social factors. All of these factors have some influences on junior high school teachers’ burnout level. 

On the basis of the above findings, the researcher draws some implications that may be helpful to deal with the phenomenon of junior high school teachers’ burnout level. 

Keywords: burnout, English teachers, key factors

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

1.1 Significance and Purpose of the Study-1

1.2 Structure of the thesis-2

Chapter Two Literature review-3

2.1 Definitions of Key Terms-3

2.1.1 Burnout-3

2.1.2 Teachers’ Burnout-4

2.2 Need Theory-4

2.3 Related Studies-4

Chapter Three Methodology-6

3.1 Research Questions-6

3.2 Subjects-6

3.3 Instruments-6

3.3.1 Teachers’ Burnout Questionnaire-7

3.3.2 Interview-7

3.4 Data Collection and Analysis-7

Chapter Four Results and Discussion-9

4.1 General Picture of Teachers’ Burnout-9

4.2 Factors Influencing Teachers’ Burnout Level-10

4.2.1 Factors Getting From the Questionnaire-10

4.2.2 Factors Getting from Interview Data-11

Chapter Five Conclusion-15

5.1 Major Findings-15

5.2 Implications-15

5.3 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Studies-16

References-17

Appendix A: Burnout Questionnaire for Teachers-18

Appendix B : Interview Questions-20

文献综述报告-21