学士学位论文--初中英语教师职业倦怠现状调查与对策研究终稿正文.doc

外国语学院本科毕业论文

Actuality Investigation and Countermeasure Research on English Teachers’ Burnout in Junior Middle School
初中英语教师职业倦怠现状调查与对策研究

院 系　　　外国语学院　 　
专 业　　　英 语　
班 级　2009级本科（3）班
学 号 0903013008 　
学 生 姓 名　　 马 玉 红 　
指 导 教 师　　 李 洁
职 称 　 副 教 授 　

2013 年 4 月

Acknowledgements

This paper is a result of contributions from many supporting individuals.
During the process of writing, I have received various kinds of help from many people. Because of their help, I have finished writing this paper so smoothly. Here, I want to render my sincere thanks to all the teachers and classmates who have given me their help in the last four years. The help is not only one of the most important treasures deserving cherishing all my life, but also will be a perfect guide in my life in the future.
My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my supervisor, Ms. Li. In this short but sufficient period, she has given me many good suggestions for the materials and the ways of organizing ideas. Without her consistent instructions, this paper would not have reached its present form.
My sincere thanks are also owed to all the teachers who have taught me during the four years of my university study. I also thank all my classmates and friends who have enriched my life with their generous help and precious friendship.
I also thank very much for the teachers who helped me do the survey.
The finishing of my paper is not an end but a new beginning. I believe that I can do better and better in my future life. Thank you again, my supervisor, my teachers and my classmates.

I

Abstract

With the rapid development and progress in economics and society, all the countries compete with each other more and more severely. As a matter of fact, the competition between countries depends on talents in each country. Therefore, talent training is widely focused on all over the world. As instructors of talents, teachers are required to improve their professional qualities and teaching skills. Although these requirements motivate teachers’ potential, they bring about a great deal of pressure to teachers at the same time. If teachers suffer more and more pressure, they will be tired of their profession sooner or later.
This study uses both the quantitative method and the qualitative method to conduct the research. Instruments consist of a questionnaire and an interview. On the basis of exploration and discussion of the causes behind secondary school English teachers’ burnout, from the perspectives of society, school and individual, the study puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions for relieving and overcoming secondary school English teachers’ burnout.

Key Words: teachers’ burnout; secondary school English teachers; causes; countermeasures

II

摘 要

随着经济的飞速发展和社会的巨大进步，各国之间的竞争也越来越激烈，国与国的竞争归根到底是人才的竞争，因此人才的培养受到了充分的重视。随之而来的是对于人才培养者—教师各方面能力的要求，这样虽然激发了教师的潜能，可同时也给他们带来了巨大的压力，一旦这种压力大量堆积而又得不到及时排解，教师就会对职业产生倦怠。
本文采用了以定量研究与定性研究相结合的研究方法，通过问卷和访谈的方式，在探析初中英语教师职业倦怠原因的基础上，论文从社会、学校以及个人三个层面有针对性的提出了缓解与克服中学英语教师职业倦怠的对策与建议。

关键词：职业倦怠；初中英语教师；成因；对策
III

Contents

Acknowledgements 错误！未定义书签。
Abstract 错误！未定义书签。
摘 要 III
I. Introduction 1
II. Literature Review 1
2.1 Concepts of Burnout 1
2.2 Definition of Teachers’ Burnout 2
2.3 Previous Studies at Home and Abroad 2
III. Theoretical Framework 3
3.1 The Maslach Burnout Model and Inventory 3
3.2 Pines’ Burnout Model and Measure 3
3.3 Fessler’s Teacher’s Career Cycle Theory 4
3.4 Friedman’s Diachronic Model 4
IV. Methodology 4
4.1 Research Purpose 4
4.2 Subjects 5
4.3 Instruments 6
4.3.1 Questionnaire 6
4.3.2 Interview 6
4.4 Data Collection and Analysis 6
V. Results and Discussion 7
5.1 Review of Current Burnout Situation 7
5.2 Main causes of Secondary School English teachers’ burnout 7
VI. Suggestions 9
6.1 Individual Efforts 9
6.2 Organizational Support 9
6.3 Social Support 10
Bibliography 12
Appendix A 14
Appendix B 18

18

I. Introduction
In modern society, English teachers’ profession is characterized by complexity and creativeness. Especially in our country, exam-oriented-education-based teaching model still has its place at middle schools. As a result, English teachers regard students’ scores as the most important factor, which imposes heavy burden on them. Teachers have to play several roles at the same time. If they cannot do it well, they are more likely to have role-conflict. Teaching job satisfaction, role conflict, role ambiguity and working environmental satisfaction are four important predictive variables to burnout. There is a negative correlation between job performance and role conflict. It directly affects the development of teachers and their teaching. Based on the above facts, we learn that now teachers are facing a great deal of pressure in their teaching career and some teachers have burnout to varying degrees. It is important to understand the situation of English teachers’ burnout. However, at present the empirical studies on the current situation of teachers’ burnout are few. This study tries to investigate the current situation of English teachers’ burnout at middle schools, analyze its causes and provide some referential suggestions to comprehend this phenomenon.
Based on the above statements about teachers’ pressure, it is not difficult to find out that burnout has a negative influence on English teachers’ work and life at middle schools. And it also brings about heavy burden on them. Therefore, what is highly necessary to do is to understand the current situation of English teachers’ burnout, analyze its causes and provide some suggestions for improvement.
The purpose of this study is to figure out whether English teachers at middle schools suffer burnout or not, investigate the current situation of these teachers’ burnout, and find out its causes and major features.
The study’s theoretical significance lies in its empirical enrichment of the theoretical basis about teachers’ burnout. Also, it is hoped that the study could help teachers find out the causes of burnout. At the same time, the suggestions made could be useful for teachers to relieve burnout and improve their professional abilities.
II. Literature Review
2.1 Concepts of Burnout
Freudenberger(1974:12) first coined the term to describe persons in helping professions who “wear out”. Cherniss (1980), and Schaufeli, et al. (1993) described burnout as the professionals’ inability to develop a sense of competence, effectiveness, self-efficacy, and existential significance.
Freudenberger (1977:12) identified the phenomenon of burnout as “cynicism, negativism, inflexibility, and rigidity of thinking, unhappiness, boredom, psychosomatic symptoms, and a condition in which the helping wears out in their pursuit of impossible goals”. Freudenberger and Richelson’s follow-up research (1980:12) sympathetically articulated that “whenever expectations were accidentally diverse from reality and the person obstinately persisted in trying to fulfill the expectations, trouble was inevitable.” Subsequently, friction builds deep inside; the unavoidable consequences of strain and anxiety are a depletion of the individual’s resources, and attrition of vitality and energy, and a malfunction of role and position.
Other researchers (Maslach & Jackson, 1986; Schaufeli et al., 1993) concluded that burnout is a loss of idealism and enthusiasm about work or about a role and is “a gradual process of disillusionment” (Schaufeli et al., 1993:35).
This fashionable and threatening term of burnout has become socially, mentally, and psychologically acceptable for describing malfunctioned organizational behavior. It is a plague in emotionally charged helping professions and people-work that offer overload individual capability and provide high environmental stressors (Gold, 1988; Greenberger, 1980; Schaufeli et al., 1993). This personal dysfunction occurs basically because the interaction in the helping professions is often focused on current problems and chorus of complaints that invariably involve personal feelings of anger, fear, frustration, disappointment, and chronic tension, without possible feedback (Cherniss, 1980; Maslach & Jackson, 1986).
2.2 Definition of Teachers’ Burnout
The relationship between teacher burnout and job burnout is that of included and including. Teachers are the high-risk group of this occupational disease. Till now, there is no fixed definition for "teacher burnout", although all the researchers got a consensus that teacher burnout is a kind of extreme reaction that teachers could not smoothly deal with work stress, and have an exhaustion state of emotion, attitude and action under prolonged high pressure. Its classical symptom is low job satisfaction, loss of work enthusiasm and interest, the state of estrangement and apathy (曾玲娟，伍新春, 2003).
2.3 Previous Studies at Home and Abroad
Since the concept of "burnout" was put forward by American clinical psychologist Freudenberger in 1974, greater attention has been given to the research on it.
From the end of the 1970s, western researchers started to study on teachers' job burnout, especially focused on the factors which cause teachers’ burnout and achieved certain representative research findings. Leithwood (1999) emphasizes influence of the role of school leader on burnout which distinguishes his idea from others. The feature of Bryne's (1992) study lies in influence of personality factor. He considers that the factor of personality could explain why teachers respond differently while facing the same pressures in the same work condition with the same education background and teaching experience.
Teachers' burnout in China becomes worse because of the comparatively low degree of teachers' professionalization, obviously stenotic nature of labor value, great pressures derived from education reform and realistically psychological fall of social status. Consequently, not only does it affects teachers' physical and mental health, but also negatively influences students' development and goes against the sustainable development of education.
III. Theoretical Framework
3.1 The Maslach Burnout Model and Inventory
According to this conceptualization (Maslach & Jackson, 1986; Maslach, 1982; Maslach & Leiter, 1997), burnout is viewed as a syndrome that consists of three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being depleted of one’s emotional resources. This dimension was regarded as the basic individual stress component of the syndrome (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Depersonalization, referring to negative, cynical or excessively detached response to other people at work, represents the interpersonal component of burnout. Reduced personal accomplishment, referring to feelings of decline in one’s competence and productivity and to one’s lowered sense of self-efficacy, represents the self-evaluation component of burnout (Maslach, 1998). The three dimensions were not deducted theoretically but resulted from labeling exploratory factor-analyzed items initially collected to reflect the range of experiences associated with the phenomenon of burnout (Maschlach, 1998; Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998).
3.2 Pines’ Burnout Model and Measure
Pines and her colleagues defined burnout as the state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by long –term involvement in emotionally demanding situations (Pines & Aronson, 1988). This view does not restrict the application of the term burnout to the helping professions, as was initially the case with the first version of the MBI. A possible drawback is that this approach does not view burnout in a work context. Indeed, it was applied not only to employment relationships and organizational careers (Pines & Aronson, 1988), but also to marital relationships (Pines, 1988) and to the aftermath of political conflicts (Pines, 1993).
3.3 Fessler’s Teacher’s Career Cycle Theory
Researches on teacher career development appeared recently, among which the most influential one is Fessler’s Teacher’s Career Cycle Theory, which was raises by Ralph Fessler, professor of Johns Hopkins University, and Judith C. Christensen, professor of National Louis University in 1992. According to Fessler’s Teacher’s Career Cycle Theory, teachers’ development could be divided into eight stages, which are named as the career stages of Pre-Service, Induction, Competency Building, Enthusiastic and Growing, Career Frustration, Stable and Stagnant, Career Wind-Down, and Career Exit (金忠明，林炊利, 2008)
From the above teacher career circle theory people think that teacher burnout usually arises in the three stages of Career Frustration, Stable and Stagnant and Career Wind-Down. But is it the same at present? Are there some new phenomena of teacher burnout? This is what the author focuses on in this paper.
3.4 Friedman’s Diachronic Model
Friedman recognizes teacher burnout from the aspect of teacher career (Friedman, 2000). He thinks that teacher burnout is not a sudden issue, but a long-term gradual process. From he aspect of teacher career, before he/she begins his/her occupation, most of the teacher has high expectation for their future occupation, and very confident for themselves to finish the teaching tasks. But after begin the job, many find that it is very different between ideals and realities. A strong psychological gap appears, then burnout. Friedman divides the development of teacher career into three stages: Fall Period;Fatigue and Exhaustion Period;Adjustment Stage.
IV. Methodology
4.1 Research Purpose
According to Maslach’s three dimensions job burnout model, which is accepted world-wide, secondary English teachers’ burnout could be divided into three dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment.
The present research aims to investigate the situation of secondary English teachers’ burnout phenomenon, to explore and discuss its level and the causes of their burnout. Through investigation and exploration this research intends to put forward some countermeasures so as to do contributions to secondary English teaching. The investigation was guided by the following questions:
1. What is the current situation of burnout among secondary English teachers?
2. What are the causes of secondary English teachers’ burnout?
3. What kind of measures could be taken to prevent and reduce the phenomenon of secondary English teachers’ burnout?
4.2 Subjects
160 secondary English teachers from different school located in zhengzhou City, henan Province are invited to participate in the investigation. In the