Teachers Burnout In Schools

1) Introduction

It is recognized that teaching is one of those jobs which is full of stress (Borg & Riding, 1991). Each year considerable number of teachers are inclined to quit their career due to their job’s demanding nature (Brouwers & Tomic, 1999). When compared with people from other professions, teachers show more symptoms of burnout such as exhaustion and cynicism (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996). Maslach et al. (1996) defines burnout as a state of exhaustion, cynicism, and reduction in individuals’ professional efficacy. Teachers’ burnout is of primary importance for many schools and institutions today and they are preoccupied with understanding the factors influencing teachers’ burnout and the ways teachers’ burnout can be prevented.

Over the past 35 years, the concept of burnout has been interesting to researchers and experts and even ordinary people from different countries, and contrary to previous beliefs about its restriction to western communities, nowadays burnout occurs almost in every society (Shaufeli, Leiter & Maslach, 2009). The term burnout was first introduced by Freudenberger (1974) to refer to a state of physical, emotional, and mental depletion resulting from work overload, and imbalance between expected and real job reward. The emergence of burnout concept engendered enthusiasm in practitioners and researchers in different fields to probe into burnout’s definition, its cause, and different ways of its prevention. Burnout is referred to as a prolonged stress happening in those people whose jobs require working with others in some way (Maslach & Schaufeli, 1993). Burnout is “an issue of particular concern for people-oriented occupations in which (a) the relationship between providers and recipients is central to the work and (b) the provision of education, service, or treatment can be a highly emotional experience” (Maslach, 1999, p. 209). The term ‘burnout’ was coined in the United States almost 40 years ago. Farber (1983,p.3) describes that “Burned-out professionals are more frequently absent or late for work than their non-burned out colleagues; they become noticeably less idealistic and more rigid; their performance at work deteriorates markedly, and they may fantasize or actually plan on leaving the