A Study On Job Burnout Among High School English Teachers

Teachers' job burnout is one of the important factors affecting their professional development.Teachers' job burnout is a state of exhaustion caused by teachers' emotions,attitudes,and behaviors.It is a persistent bad state.Maslach et al.defined job burnout as a multi-dimensional concept that includes three dimensions: emotional exhaustion,depersonalization,and reduced personal accomplishment.Burnout has a detrimental effect on an individual's work and further leads to problems in their lives.With the development of social civilization,people pay more and more attention to education,especially the education of young people.Therefore,the level of education and the requirements for teachers are gradually increasing.Teachers face more and more difficulties and demands,making them vulnerable to job burnout.Based on the background,the purpose of the study is to examine the status quo of job burnout among senior high school English teachers and to explore the difference in demographic characteristics on job burnout.The study used the questionnaire and the interview as instruments to investigate English teachers coming from senior high schools in Handan City.The data was analyzed by using SPSS 13.0(The Statistical Package for Social Sciences).The major findings of the study are as follows:In general,there is a mild job burnout problem among senior high school English teachers.And English teachers have a little higher emotional exhaustion and lower personal accomplishments.The characteristic of depersonalization is not obvious.According to gender,male English teachers have a little higher burnout than female teachers,especially in the dimensions of EE and DP.But there is no significant difference.According to school type,there is a significant difference between public school teachers and private school teachers in the reduced personal accomplishment.English teachers in public schools have lower levels of accomplishment than English teachers in private schools.In terms of age,English teachers over age 50 have more obvious job burnout,especially in the aspect of emotional exhaustion.There is no significant difference between single English teachers and married English teachers on the general burnout level.The degree of burnout of married teacher is a little higher than that of single teacher.In relation to educational background,the general burnout level of teachers with bachelor degree is higher than that of English teachers with master degree.From the academic title,English teachers with superfine title have a greater level of burnout than other teachers and their emotions are exhausted greatly.Both head teachers and ordinary teachers have mild burnout.In addition,head teachers are higher than ordinary teachers in the general burnout and the dimensions of EE,DP and RPA.According to grade,English teachers who teach Grade Twelve have a little higher job burnout than those who teach Grade Ten and Grade Eleven.They have more serious emotional exhaustion.And English teachers who have more workload tend to have more serious burnout.In terms of teaching age,there is a significant difference among different teaching age.English teachers with more than 20 teaching age have the most serious burnout in general burnout level and the dimensions of EE and RPA.To sum up,demographic factors include gender,school type,age,marital status,educational background,academic title,head teacher or not,grade being taught,weekly workload have no significant difference on job burnout,but different teaching age have significant differences on job burnout.