Why Teachers Become Burnt-out: A Critical Study Of Teachers' Professional Stress

In China, there are a growing number of in-service teachers in high schools that are overburdened and permanently confronted with severe challenges arising from the demands of the public and external assessment of their jobs. Under this stress, they struggle to maintain the psychic and emotional essential energy to their work. Working for long hours on a daily basis and having no enough space for inner peace and harmony burn them out.The school environment in which they work has a significant impact on their professional development. Due to the conditions of the professional lives, teachers are denied to control over their professional lives. The community of teachers is not constituted as a community of practice in their schools. When the school culture dismisses inner truth and honors only to the external world, the teachers lose heart to teach. They seldom recognize themselves as holders of personal practical knowledge of good teaching. They disconnect from their students, from their subjects, even from themselves. They build a wall between inner truth and outer performance to minimize the danger. We can see that the teachers are tempted to protect their sense of ego behind barricades of status, to withhold themselves from colleagues or students.Against this background, cultural, political and psychological, my research intends to answer the two questions: 1): What is the living condition of the English teachers in high schools nowadays? 2): Why do the English teachers become burnt-out?The theoretical frameworks that are used in the research include teacher identity, Freud's "Id, Ego and Superego" theory (1998), Jung's archetype theory (1954), Lacan's mirror-symbolic-order theory (2002) as well as Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory (1946). From these social theories, I intend to gain some insight into the identity and needs of teachers in China. The research methods adopted in the study are a combination of case study, narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis. By drawing on western theories on identity, knowledge and discourse as well as Chinese traditional philosophy of education, I intend to portray the life of a Chinese teacher of English and reflect her true life, and then told us the true portrait of a teacher. At the same time, attempts are made to address the current problems and needs of our education in general and Chinese teacher of English in particular.From studies of teacher burnout, we can know in China most teachers endure burnout. We can also see that three aspects influence teacher burnout effectively. They are society, organization and the teacher himself. So we suggest to reduce, to eliminate and to prevent teacher burnout through the three aspects above. To some extent, my study enriches the theories of teacher burnout. In short, my study is meaningful to teaching reform in our country today.