Teaching Strategies
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Job burnout is a psychological symptom considered by most researchers to be a long-term process where chronic exposure to stress leads to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishments. Among teachers, job burnout is more prevalent than it is among individuals in almost any other occupation. As helping professionals, teachers are not only responsible for the daily requirements of their job, but also for fostering the well-being of others. These responsibilities can create an additional level of stress, and when combined with long hours, dealing with difficult students, and pressures to increase student achievement, they can quickly lead to the depletion of physical and psychological resources. Teachers experiencing burnout often report they no longer can meet the needs of their students, are ineffective both inside and outside of the classroom, and that the majority of their attitudes and feelings towards students, colleagues, and work in general, are negative. Two models of burnout seek to explain the causes that onset the cycle leading to teacher burnout: the psychological model and the sociological model. According to the psychological model, teacher burnout is viewed as the inability of the individual to cope with work stressors in the school environment. The development of burnout occurs when the demands of the job continually exceed the teacher’s resources and ability to cope with the demands. This model is practiced widely in the U.S. and focuses on the individual as the target of intervention. In contrast, according to the sociological model, burnout is viewed as a result of organizational or structural stressors. Rather than focusing on the teachers’ inability to cope with work stressors, this model is conceptualized as a form of alienation from the school environment. The development of burnout in this model begins when teachers are unhappy with their defined role in the school, or when they are unable to determine their role expectations. This causes a sense of powerlessness that with time, additional experiences with failure, or lack of support, leads to a sense of meaninglessness. Often, the teacher then begins to distance herself from the social context of the
school, leading to isolation and eventually estrangement as she is completely disengaged from her role as teacher. The sociological model is more prevalent in Europe and has drawn considerable support in the research literature. In contrast to the psychological model, the focus of intervention in the sociological model is on changing the environment rather than changing the person. The incidence of burnout is most prevalent (as high as 40–50%) among teachers who are half way through their teaching career, having between 7 and 12 years of experience. In addition, middle-aged teachers, who are more likely to remain in the teaching profession than teachers under the age of 30 and teachers older than 50, are in the age range at highest risk for experiencing burnout. Furthermore, passionate and dedicated teachers are t
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