An Analysis Of Correlations Among Teacher Burnout, Teacher Self-Efficacy And Achievement Motivation In University EFL Teacher Professional Development

With the promotion of educational reform in university EFL teaching and the professionalization of teachers, increasing importance has been attached to university EFL teacher professional development, a crucial link in the implementation of the educational reform. However, with a large amount of teaching and research tasks they have to accomplish, university EFL teachers are more likely to fall victim of job burnout, which seriously hurts them physically and psychologically and impedes professional development in the long term. Meanwhile, teacher self-efficacy and achievement motivation, other two important psychological mechanisms in the framework of social cognition, are theoretically considered as closely related to teacher burnout. These three psychological mechanisms which involve emotion, self-concept and motivation, exert considerable impacts on teacher beliefs and teaching behaviors. Thus, with inherent relations among them, teacher burnout, self-efficacy and achievement motivation are considered as internal factors in teacher professional development.Although there are multiple researches on teacher burnout, teacher self-efficacy, achievement motivation and their correlations, controversies still remain among the findings, and relevant studies in the field of university EFL teacher development are quite few. What is the status quo of university EFL teachers'burnout, self-efficacy and achievement motivation in teacher professional development? What are the personal variables that can significantly influence these three psychological mechanisms? What kind of internal relationships among them?In order to answer these research questions, this study adopts quantitative and qualitative approaches. It examines the correlations among teacher burnout, teacher self-efficacy, achievement motivation as well as their status quo by using a sample collected from 156 EFL teachers in three ordinary universities in Sichuan and Hubei province with questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with five respondents. The data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics, Independent T-test, One-way ANOVA, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Multiple Linear Regression with Statistics Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Major findings in relation to research questions are presented as follows:1. Although almost every university EFL teacher suffers burnout to some extent, the general situation is not very serious. Their self-efficacy is generally at a moderately high level, especially in the dimension of personal teaching efficacy. And their motive to achieve success is slightly stronger than their motive to avoid failure.2. The results of demographic analyses reveal that personal factors including the work branch, size of class, educational background, professional title, and the amount of work have significant impact on the level of university EFL teacher burnout. Teacher self-efficacy is significantly influenced by three personal factors:the work branch, the size of the class and educational background. And their achievement motivation is strongly related to gender, educational background and professional title.3. There are strong correlations among teacher burnout, teacher self-efficacy and achievement motivation. Burnout is negatively correlated to teacher self-efficacy and achievement motivation; and teacher self-efficacy is positively correlated to achievement motivation. Highly motivated teachers with the stronger motive to achieve professional success are more likely to exhibit high levels of self-efficacy and less likely to fall victim of teacher burnout; the higher the teacher's self-efficacy is, the lower his or her burnout is.4. The conceptual model is constructed on the basis of theoretical analysis and the coefficients of the model are evaluated through regression analysis. Therefore, the model can provide mathematical explanations of correlations among three variables:teacher self-efficacy and achievement motivation have 27.6% explanation on the job burnout; there are 0.366 degree of increased teacher burnout for every decrease in achievement motivation by one degree; 0.245 degree of increased teacher burnout for every decrease in teacher self-efficacy by one degree. And there are 0.462 degree increased in teacher self-efficacy for ever increase in achievement motivation by one degree.On the basis of the above-mentioned findings and the qualitative analyses of interview results, some implications for university EFL teacher professional development are presented from aspects of pre-service teacher education, in-service teacher development and teacher evaluation. Besides, corresponding limitations and suggestions are included in the thesis so as to promote future research in this field.