A Study On High School EFL Teachers' Burnout And Counter-measures In Suburban Area Of Guangzhou

Teacher burnout has been a frequently encountered phenomenon by English teachers at different professional development stages in their pursuit of teacher professionalization.Although recent three decades have witnessed an increasing number of researches in this field,researches on teacher burnout among high school teachers in the suburbs of Guangzhou on specific subject like English are very few.None of the existing researches on teacher burnout has provided a comprehensive account to the general situation and affecting factors to burnout in the secondary education addressed to particular suburban area,Baiyun District of Guangzhou.The present study sets out to explore the current situation of high school EFL teacher burnout in Baiyun District,and to investigate into its causes with a hope of proposing some possible suggestions to alleviate and further prevent the syndromes.Quantitative and qualitative analyses are adopted in this study.131 high school EFL teachers,half of the whole sample of 260 ordinary high school EFL teachers in Baiyun District.They are invited to take part in two questionnaire surveys.The intruments employed are Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educator Survey and Questionnaire of Affecting Factors to Teacher Burnout.The first one was developed by an American social psychologist with 28 items pertaining to the situation of teacher burnout.It is designed to display the current burnout level and the relation between demographic features and teacher burnout.The other is a 22-itemed questionnaire on the affecting factors to teacher burnout.It is composed of three sub-factors,professional,organizational and social factors in occupational environmental domains.After the two questionnaire surveys are conducted,semi-structured interviews with four chosen participants provide more detailed account to the sources of teacher burnout.The data collected from the questionnaires are loaded into SPSS.22 for processing.Descriptive analyses,Frequency Tests,Independent T-Test,One-Way ANOVAs and Multiple Linear Regression Analyses are conducted.Based on the Grounded Theory Methodology,the transcriptions from theinterviews recordings are analyzed to generate descriptive account burnout sources in details.The general statistical results of this study indicate that:(1)High school EFL teachers in suburban area of Guangzhou,Baiyun District,are generally experiencing some degree of burnout but the level is not serious.In particular,they suffer from obvious emotional exhaustion,but relatively low depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment.(2)From the perspective of personal domain,it is found that gender is significantly related to teacher burnout.The demographic features,gender,ages,years of teaching experience are important predictors to teacher burnout.(3)Male EFL teachers exhibit higher burnout in emotional exhaustion,depersonalization and overall dimensions.But they have a greater sense of personal accomplishment.(4)EFL teachers at different age groups display different levels of burnout.Significant difference is found in the reduced personal accomplishment domain regarding age and years of teaching.EFL teachers at their forties suffer from the most serious emotional exhaustion,followed by younger and novice teachers.Veteran teachers display the least burnout in this dimension and depersonalization.The younger age groups exhibit more or less the same level of burnout in the second dimension.There exists significant difference in reduced personal accomplishment.Teachers at their thirties have the least sense of personal achievement,followed by their younger and older age groups whereas the senior group has the greatest sense of achievement.(5)As for the years of teaching experience,it can be summarized that high school EFL teachers with 16-20 years of teaching experience suffer from the most serious burnout in the emotional exhaustion and overall burnout level.Teachers who have been teaching for 6-10 years display the least burnout in the first two dimension and overall burnout level.And 11-15 year-teaching group is prone to suffer from the most serious burnout in depersonalization among the five groups.And the teachers with 20 more years teaching experience enjoy the greatest sense of personal achievementwhile teachers with 11-15 year teaching experience have the least sense of achievement.(6)As a result of the analysis of data gathered from the Questionnaire of Affecting Factors to Teacher Burnout and semi-structured interviews,it was found that three factors,professional factors(PF),organizational factors(OF)and social factors(SF)are important predictors of high school EFL teacher burnout in Baiyun District.Of the three factors,the professional factors(PF)is the most effective predictor,followed by organizational factors(OF)and social factors(SF).To be specific,the major top five affecting factors to the teacher burnout are: workload,organizational management and climate,pay and gain,performance evaluation system and job prospect.(7)In response to the top five sources of the teacher burnout,possible feasible counter-measures can be proposed accordingly from personal and occupational environmental domains.