Studying On The Occupational Burnout Of Overseas TCSL Teachers

With the development of China’s economy and the improvement of comprehensive national strength, the demand of learning Chinese is increasing rapidly as each year passes. In addition to Volunteers and teachers of the Confucius Institute, there are also a large number of organizations and international school teachers who have been engaged in overseas Chinese teaching. Although domestic and foreign Chinese teaching career is thriving, the sustained and stable team of international Chinese teachers has not yet formed. Due to working abroad, the job of overseas TCSL(Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) teachers is usually much more multiple, diverse and multidimensional. Add their strict self-discipline; they are much easier to suffer working pressure, even occupational burnout.Although the "San Jiao" problems of international Chinese language education have been caused attention in multi focus, the core of teacher’s problem is still paid insufficient attention. The study on the burnout of TCSL teachers in overseas is blank; and the exploring of occupational burnout by case study is also rare. So this study combines research methods of questionnaires and case studies to investigate and analyze the occupational burnout of TCSL teachers in three international schools of Indonesia. First of all, the overseas TCSL teachers occupation burnout survey was created by increasing the "intercultural communication" dimension on the current basis; secondly, the cognitive differences of demographic variables in the different dimensions were discussed by using some statistics methods like correlation analysis, T test and Kruskal-Wallis test, etc; thirdly, it discussed the deep reasons of the occupational burnout through by the typical cases analysis and in-depth interviews, which in order to put forward the countermeasures.Accordingly, the following main conclusions are drawn:1. Burnout status:In general, they have a certain degree of occupational burnout. To be specific, it is moderate burnout in the exhaustion dimension, mild burnout in the reduced accomplishment dimension and moderate burnout in the intercultural communication dimension.2. The difference of occupational burnout in different statistical variables:(1) In the depersonalization, the male’s is more serious than the female’s, and the teachers who married are more tired. (2) The difference of occupational burnout among the overseas TCSL teachers with different professional background is not significant. (3) Overseas TCSL teachers occupational burnout overall decreases with school age, but the change tendency is not the same in different dimensions. (4) About aim of going abroad, it has no significant difference in the exhaustion and the reduced accomplishment, but in the depersonalization, there was a significant difference; and the intercultural communication is extremely significant.3. On the basis of questionnaires and case analysis, it is suggested that the causes of occupational burnout have three aspects, including teachers’personal, school organizations and society. Therefore, our mitigation and preventive measures also include above three aspects:(1)About teachers’ personal, we should enhance the enthusiasm of professional development, foster the idea of lifelong learning and improve cross cultural adaptability; (2)About school organizations, it is necessary for them to reduce the workload of teachers, organize job training regularly and establish the psychological support care system. The most important is about the perfect career planning and salary design; (3)About society:we’d better return to the basic teacher role, popularize the EAP services ABC and formulate the appropriate guidance of national policy.In conclusion, this dissertation analyzed the present situation of overseas TCSL teachers’ occupational burnout, pointed out the reasons and tried to put forward the corresponding countermeasures. It is hoped that our research can provide valuable advice for mitigating and preventing overseas TCSL teachers’burnout, and safeguard earnestly the teachers’ physical and mental health in order to promote the maturity and stability of the overseas TCSL teachers’ team, as well as the international popularization of the Chinese language.