A burning issue among English teachers: Reflections of in-service teachers on job satisfaction and burnout

Abstract

Teacher work overload can cause stress among teachers and how teachers respond to prolonged stress may cause them to experience teacher burnout in the long term. Therefore, this study aims to find out possible causes of burnout among English teachers, their expectations to prevent teacher burnout and increase their job satisfaction. 42 in-service English teachers in different types of schools in Turkey participated in the study. The quantitative data were collected by means of two instruments measuring job satisfaction and burnout while qualitative data consisted of the open-ended questions in the Written Interview Protocol. Statistical procedures were employed to detect the correlation between the two inventories while constant comparison method of grounded theory was used to code and categorize the interview results. Findings revealed that among the demographic variables, only teaching experience was correlated with job satisfaction and burnout at a low level and there was a low negative relationship between job satisfaction and burnout. Relatively strong positive relationship was identified between depersonalization and emotional exhaustion in addition to the strong positive correlation between the intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction levels. Such factors as shareholders, self-efficacy, physical and social environment of the school were found to play an important role in teacher burnout. Teachers reported various suggestions to handle burnout among English teachers and provided practical solutions to better foreign language instruction.