Burnout In EFL Teachers’ Professional Development

Education plays a critical role in improving comprehensive national strength. Teachers are the key factor that determines the quality of education. With the development of society and intensifying of competition, the phenomena of job burnout have appeared in the field of education. As a kind of invisible occupational hazard, job burnout negatively influences teachers both in body and mind. Since the1980s, the study on job burnout extended to the field of education and attracted more and more attention of researchers. Compared with other professions, the researches on job burnout of English teachers in middle school are few. Based on the previous theories of job burnout, such as Freudenberger’s (1974) clinical view, Pines’(1981) social psychological view of job burnout and the edited-interpreted edition of Maslach’s MBI, the present thesis takes the English teachers of middle schools in Fuquan city as the research subjects to investigate the phenomena of teacher burnout and analyze the deep-seated factors and bring forward the countermeasures to reduce their career burnout. The investigation and analysis of this thesis show that many teachers experience disillusionment and eventually exhibit some burnout symptoms:low interest and motivation in class preparation, fatigue and frustration, frequent complaints, absenteeism, and a desire to leave the teaching profession etc. The investigation results indicate that the middle school English teachers in Fuquan city do have burnout, but their burnout is not very serious. The sources of teacher burnout are related to social factors (the high expectation of society to teachers and the influence of examinational system), school factors (organizational and evaluation system, students’ problems, work stress and heavy workload), and the personal factors (ages, teaching ages, teachers’personality, teaching efficacy, teachers’ self-adjustment and interpersonal relationship). This thesis proposes some countermeasures to alleviate English teachers’burnout, such as to change the educational concept and teaching methods, to improve the English teachers’teaching efficacy, to improve English teachers’self-adjustment, to respect and meet the teachers’reasonable requirement, and to establish flexible and scientific evaluation system and so forth. It is expected to provide some theoretical basis for the educational institutions to have a thorough understanding of teacher burnout and offer some reference for the development of English teachers in middle schools.This paper is made up of six chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to the study background, its purpose and significance and the design of the study. Chapter two makes a view of the related research home and abroad about EFL teachers’ professional development and teacher burnout. Chapter three introduces the theoretical foundations, including teachers’professional development and theories of burnout. Chapter four presents research procedure on English Teachers in Fu quan city and analyzes the research datum. Chapter five discusses the current situation, features, causes and harms of teacher burnout, then promote some approaches to relieve English teachers’burnout. Chapter six is the last part, which offers major findings of the study and puts forward suggestions to teachers, students’parents, schools and educational administration. Also, it deals with the limitation of the study and the implications for future research.