A Study On College English Teachers' Burnout In Professional Development

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.Burnout occurs in groups of people in service profession.Teachers' group is one of them.Burnout negatively influences people both in body and mind.It causes tense relationship with people around and negative attitude at work.When burnout occurs,teachers easily lose love and patience to students,do not prepare well for class,lose ability of controlling teaching and sense of achievement.All these affect the teaching quality and students' development as well.With rapid social development and deepening of education reform,demands on teachers are getting higher and higher.As college English teachers,whose students are in a huge number,have to face the problems of heavy workloads,teaching difficulties caused by different levels of students, assessing difficulties of teaching effect,rigid requirements on research,low salary and heavy stress on living.Consequently,they easily feel burnout in their professional development so as to negatively affect quality of college English teaching.Therefore,it is practical to investigate the status quo of college English teachers' burnout in professional development.This thesis consists of 5 chapters.Chapter One mainly deals with the background,the purpose and significance of the study.It is the breakthrough point of the study and clarifies the necessary of the study.Chapter Two serves as a theoretical base of this study.First,the origin,development and basic theory of teachers' professional development as well as relevant researches on college English teachers' professional development are introduced.Furthermore,relevant researches on burnout and burnout prevention as well as teachers' burnout are dealt with.In chapter Three,research questions,participants of the study,research procedure,data collection and data analysis are specified respectively.Literature analysis,questionnaire and interview as well as statistical analysis method are used to investigate the status quo,professional characteristics,causes and countermeasures of college English teachers' burnout in professional development.Chapter Four is the major finds of the study.Data analysis indicates that most college English teachers(in Shandong and Yunnan province) suffer from different degrees of burnout. The levels of burnout in dimension of emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment are comparatively high while the level of burnout in dimension of depersonalization is comparatively low.The causes of such status quo are summarized as:1.The negative effects of market-economy mentally strike college English teachers.The low social acceptance reduced college English teachers' passion.Rapid knowledge increase leads to negative development of knowledge and capacity structure.2.College English teachers are extremely emotional exhaustion because of overloaded work.Academic power is weakened while administrative power is generally exercised and Official Oriented Consciousness is inveterate.There are disadvantages in evaluation system for college English teachers.3.There are few of chances for professional development so that professional satisfaction reduces. Personal needs could not be met and sense of professional identity reduced.The interpersonal relationship is unharmonious.Ambiguity roles of teachers conflict.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the whole thesis.In order to prevent college English teachers' burnout in professional development,some measures should be taken.Society,schools, and teachers all should make efforts on keeping thought of continuing education in mind and reducing stress on teachers.It is hope that this study can be of some help for catching more attentions of teachers' mental health in the future study.