A Case Study On Online Learning Burnout Among M.Ed. Students During Covid-19 Quarantine

Burnout is a negative social psychological phenomenon,which first appeared in helping professions,such as teachers.As reserve teachers,M.Ed.students’ burnout in learning activities will affect their learning effect and predict their future job burnout.Therefore,it is necessary to prevent the development of learning burnout in the early stage.Domestic and foreign scholars have done a lot of research on job burnout,especially among helping professions,but there is still a lack of research on the learning burnout among M.Ed.students.In view of this,this study draws on the research results in the field of job burnout and social comparison theory,using motivational interview and other research methods to explore the phenomenon of M.Ed.students’ learning burnout under the background of online teaching and learning,aiming to clarify its causes and the role of social comparison in coping with burnout in the online environment,To a certain extent,it can fill the research gap in the field of M.Ed.learning burnout.This study focuses on the following three research questions:1)Is there a learning burnout phenomenon among M.Ed.students in online learning during Covid-19 quarantine?2)What are the causes of online learning burnout among M.Ed.students?3)What coping strategies did M.Ed.students take to tackle online learning burnout?This study adopts the method of case study,selecting 50 M.Ed.students in English Education from Central China Normal University to conduct a questionnaire survey,and then selecting 5 learning burnout individuals as the research object,analyzes the causes of their learning burnout and the role of social comparison as a coping strategy for their learning burnout.It is found that lack of control,excessive workload,insufficient reward and lack of sense of community have an important impact on students’ learning burnout,Due to the difficulties in using online learning technology and the pressure of answering questions in class,students often feel out of control in the learning process.Due to the lack of learning ability and the limited time to complete learning tasks,students are easy to experience failure and perceive excessive workload in the learning process.In addition,the lack of reward is mainly related to students’ learning motivation.Students who lack autonomous learning motivation are more difficult to get enough reward in the learning process.Finally,under the background of online learning,students spend most of their time completing their own learning tasks.Even in cooperative learning tasks,there is still a lack of communication and cooperation,resulting in a lack of sense of community.Students mainly resort to social comparison to deal with learning burnout.In the process of social comparison,although students need to obtain information to solve their learning difficulties,they are not willing to consult better students out of the need of maintaining their own image.On the contrary,in order to ease their negative emotions,students will actively communicate with students in similar or worse situations.However,it does not help to solve the practical problems in learning,on the contrary,it will make learning burnout even worse.Finally,this study puts forward some suggestions to prevent and reduce M.Ed.students’ learning burnout in the online teaching.Teacher educators should recognize the task-centeredness of learning motivation,take learning tasks as the link,and strengthen the communication with students,in order to find problems in time and help students.M.Ed.students should enhance learning ability and use all kinds of resources to improve learning efficiency.Researchers in the field of learning burnout should pay attention to the influence of learning competence on students’ workload perception.