Characteristics, Impacts, and Countermeasures of Teacher Burnout Syndrome in Education Field

Abstract

As teachers are representative, assistant professionals, the problem of burnout is more prominent among teachers. Some even evaluate that the teacher organization will be the most exhaustive. Such teacher burnout is a very serious educational problem. The problem of teacher burnout negatively affects not only the individual teachers but also the overall educational organization. In addition, the problem of teacher burnout may lead to the disintegration of the school organization by increasing the number of teachers leaving the teaching profession. Thus, it is necessary to understand the characteristics and impacts of teacher burnout syndrome and to develop strategies to cope with it. Therefore, in this chapter, I would like to examine the characteristics and impacts of teacher burnout syndrome and suggest countermeasures.

1. Introduction

Modern people who experience chronic job stress while experiencing new lifestyles, changes in human relationships, and various daily events in a complex organizational society in a rapidly changing modern society are in trouble with so-called burnout, a phenomenon of physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive job stress causing negative results in physiological and behavioral aspects [1, 2, 3, 4]. Such burnout causes various pathological phenomena, and teacher burnout syndrome is emerging as a major problem in the educational field [5, 6].

In accordance with social changes, in the rapidly changing educational field, teachers are receiving various demands, such as highly diversified work-handling skills, ability to organize relationships with fellow teachers, students, and parents, ability to cope with conflicts, and display creativity. In this process, most teachers face stress and suffer from teacher burnout syndrome. Teachers who experience a lot of stress due to social criticism of the teaching profession, heavy class burden, and trivial work, parents’ refusal to recognize teacher authority, difficulties in subject and life guidance, and teachers’ personal tendencies are very vulnerable to the threat of burnout syndrome. As teachers are representative, assistant professionals, the problem of burnout appears more prominently among teachers [7], and some evaluate the teacher group as the group most likely to burn out [8]. As we feared, the problem of teacher burnout syndrome is becoming increasingly serious in the recent educational field, and as a result, the number of teachers leaving the teaching profession is rapidly increasing. Teachers who suffer from teacher burnout syndrome experience both physical symptoms such as fatigue, headache, loss of appetite, insomnia, difficulty breathing, and stomach ulcers and psychological symptoms such as anger, anxiety, lethargy, depression, low self-esteem, and lack of self-control. In addition, they lose their sense of calling for the teaching profession, reduce themselves to the position of mechanical curriculum communicator, lose positive feelings or interest in students, and avoid contact with students. When teachers are burnt out, it negatively affects not only individual teachers but also students’ educational change, growth, and learning outcomes, and it adversely affects the teaching profession and organizations. As such, teacher burnout syndrome seriously affects students’ school adaptation, academic achievement, growth and development, and school education performance beyond the teacher’s own adaptation to the teaching profession [9]. So, it is urgent to understand the burnout syndrome and prepare appropriate measures to relieve it so teachers can properly relieve stress and burnout and continuously innovate their educational abilities.

Therefore, in this chapter, we try to identify what teacher burnout syndrome is, its characteristics, and how it affects individuals and organizations in actual school settings based on empirical research results, and suggest measures to resolve teacher burnout syndrome.

2. Concept and characteristics of teacher burnout syndrome

2.1 Definition of teacher burnout syndrome

Burnout was originally a term referring to the mental and physical condition of drug addicts in the United States in the 1960s [9], but it began to have the current pathological meaning when Freudenberger [1], a clinical psychologist at the New York Clinic, witnessed social workers at mental health centers lose their motivation, get tired, and eventually become cold to patients, and expressed this phenomenon as exhaustion or burnout. According to him, it means a state in which people in the interpersonal service occupation are mentally and physically depleted of energy due to overwork [1], and the more they have an idealistic view of work dedicated to their work, the more likely they are to fall into this state [9]. Around the same time, social psychologist Maslach [2] defined burnout as a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that occurs frequently in professionals who help and solve psychological, social, and physical problems as a result of emotional pressure in the process of maintaining close relationships with people, especially those in interpersonal service professions such as the medical field, social work, and teaching.

In the 1980s, interest in the burnout of workers in personal service occupations such as medical care, welfare, and education increased academically, centering on the United States, and entered the empirical research phase. Maslach & Jackson [10] criticized Freudenberger’s definition of burnout as overlooking the phenomenon of emotional burnout, and while developing the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), they defined burnout as a syndrome accompanied by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment as the main symptoms. The MBI scale developed by Maslach and Jackson [10] made a great contribution to measuring psychological burnout, and most studies measuring burnout so far utilize the scale. In addition, Schwab & Iwanicki [11], who applied the MBI developed by Maslach & Jackson to teachers and confirmed construct validity, defined teacher burnout as a syndrome that is accompanied by emotional exhaustion, dehumanization, and loss of personal self-fulfillment as its main symptoms in a state in which they have not overcome the externally assigned job and stress related to it [11].

In the 1990s, there was a tendency to expand the application of the concept of burnout to jobs without direct contact with customers. With the introduction of the concept of positive psychology after the 2000s, positive concepts such as job engagement and efficacy emerged as opposite protective factors that could overcome burnout, a negative psychological state, and research on employee welfare from a holistic perspective is being actively conducted [12].

Taken together, teacher burnout syndrome is a general term for a phenomenon in which the ability to devote oneself to students is reduced due to a lack of emotional energy due to teaching work (emotional exhaustion), the attitude of treating students as if they are objects (depersonalization), and failure and helplessness in the teaching profession are not devoted to the development of students (reduced personal accomplishment) [13].

2.2 Components of teacher burnout syndrome

The three components of teacher burnout syndrome are emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment [11, 12].

First, emotional exhaustion refers to a lack of energy in which an individual’s emotional resources are exhausted due to excessive psychological burdens or demands. This emotional exhaustion occurs when teachers find it physically or emotionally difficult to provide for students [14]. In addition, emotions, trust, interest, and vigor are lost, and in a state of being unable to concentrate on work on one’s own will, and in a state of emotional exhaustion, they fear that they have to return to work the next day to perform their duties.

Depersonalization is a kind of negative reaction to other people, sometimes described as the concept of dehumanization. It is defined as a psychological coping response when there is no physical alternative to overcome emotional exhaustion [15]. In general, when a problem with a customer occurs in the field, it can be said to be a countermeasure to overcome the exhaustion phenomenon consumed to solve the situation. In other words, to protect themselves from their own emotional exhaustion, they treat customers inhumanely, such as treating them as cases rather than people. In the case of teachers who experience this depersonalization, they become indifferent to students and take action to distance themselves [14].

Reduced personal accomplishment refers to a phenomenon in which people feel they can no longer achieve what they want because they no longer feel they can make a meaningful contribution to their work. These people exhibit behavioral characteristics such as self-denial, low morale, disengagement, decreased productivity, and incompetent responses [16]. Teachers who feel that they are no longer contributing to the growth of their students may also find reduced personal accomplishment. Since many teachers enter the teaching profession to create positive change for their students rather than financial gain, the feeling of not helping their students develop can be fatal for teachers [17].

2.3 Symptoms and consequences of teacher burnout syndrome

According to Farber and Miller [18], burnout symptoms include anger, anguish, nervousness, fatigue, depression, insomnia, boredom, anxiety, helplessness, low self-esteem, withdrawal, cynicism, and overuse of alcohol and drugs. Also, burntout teachers are thoughtless in planning for learning and plans or actually intend to leave the teaching profession [18]. Bradfield & Fones [19] found that when teachers burn out, rigid thinking, negative views, frequent early leaving, and absenteeism undermine the school atmosphere. Schwab, Jackson & Schuler [20] found that usually, the first sign of burnout is a feeling of being emotionally drained from one’s work. Emotionally drained teachers tend to treat their fellow teachers and students in depersonalizing ways or develop negative and cynical attitudes toward themselves and others [20]. According to Cherniss [21], burnout teachers have high resistance to going to work, feeling left out, anger and resentment, guilt, abandonment and indifference, pessimism, feelings of isolation and letdown, tiredness, constantly looking at the clock, severe fatigue after work, loss of positive feelings toward students, hesitant contact with students, clichéd treatment of students, poor concentration or listening ability, fixed feeling, cynicism, avoiding work discussions with peers, prejudice, drug overuse, frequent colds, frequent headaches, and digestive problems, rigidity of thinking and resistance to change, doubt and paranoia, and family conflicts. According to Brock & Grady [22], burnout symptoms include first, chronic fatigue; second, cognitive problems when individuals make decisions; third, social withdrawal from peers and students; fourth, emotional isolation from students, parents, and colleagues; building an emotional wall and blaming themselves, and fifth, showing symptoms of mental depression, and losing work satisfaction and self-confidence in chaos for a long time. It is said that even the mental values of individuals are severely shaken and fall into despair [22]. Grayson & Alvarez [14] found that when teachers burn out, they are less favorable to students and less tolerant of frustration in the classroom, creating a negative learning environment that is less sensitive to student needs.

As examined above, the symptoms of burnout are explained based on physical and emotional symptoms, but also specific symptoms such as impoverished interpersonal relationships, negative attitudes toward others or low self-esteem, dissatisfaction with the work environment, job stress, and inappropriate behaviors such as absenteeism without notice. In addition, when teachers experience burnout, they put less effort into teaching, avoid contact with students, do not accept advice from others, lose patience, become overly stubborn or authoritative toward students, furthermore, have negative opinions about the teaching profession and thoughts about leaving the workplace, and tend to neglect work such as absenteeism and lethargy, resulting in various dysfunctional aspects in individual teachers, students, and school organizations [20].

3. Impacts of teacher burnout syndrome

In this section, we will look into the variables that have an influencing relationship with teacher burnout syndrome in the educational field. We will look at the causal factors that affect teacher burnout syndrome, the outcome factors affected by teacher burnout syndrome, and the controlling factors that can control teacher burnout syndrome.

3.1 Causal factors of teacher burnout syndrome

Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter [23] synthesized studies on burnout over the past 25 years and divided the factors that cause burnout into two types, individual factors and situational factors.

3.1.1 Individual factors

The most studied variables as individual factors can be divided into demographic characteristics and psychological characteristics. First, in the case of demographic characteristics, looking at the relationship between gender and burnout, it was found that female teachers experienced more severe emotional exhaustion than male teachers, and while there are studies showing that the intensity and frequency of female teachers’ burnout are high, a study found that male teachers had a stronger degree of depersonalization than female teachers [11], and there are studies that there is no correlation with gender [24], so there is no consistent trend.

As for the relationship between burnout and marital status, there are mixed studies showing that singles have a higher relationship with burnout than married ones, studies that show no effect of marital status, and studies that married people experience more burnout than unmarried people [16].

Looking at the relationship between age and experience and burnout, Anderson & Iwanicki [25] found that teachers aged 20 to 34 had a significantly higher frequency of emotional exhaustion among the subfactors of MBI than teachers aged 45 or older, and that teachers with 13 to 24 years of experience had the lowest level of burnout in terms of personal achievement. Lim [26] presented a research result that teachers with 5–9 years of teaching experience experienced burnout the most. On the other hand, there are studies that show that there is no difference according to age or career [9]. So, age and experience also do not yield consistent research results.

As such, demographic characteristics such as gender, marital status, age, and experience do not show consistent results, making it difficult to view them as important variables in predicting burnout.

Psychological characteristics are seen as the main cause that makes the difference between the strength experienced and the ability to overcome stress and adapt to health even when the same stress is given, so it mainly appears in teacher burnout research and is established as a variable that has a great influence. Looking at the relationship between burnout and personality type among psychological characteristics, neuroticism, one of the characteristics of the five personality factors, includes anxiety, hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsivity, and weakness. Also, it has been reported that neurotic people are emotionally unstable and prone to psychological stress, which correlates with all subfactors of burnout [27]. So, it is positioned as the personality factor that best predicts teacher burnout [1]. In addition, among the personality types classified by reflecting temperamental attributes, type A behavior pattern, that is, members who show excessive enthusiasm for work with a type A behavior pattern by a competitive and time-pressured lifestyle, hostility, and excessive desire for control are reported to be vulnerable to job stress and burnout [28].

Looking at the relationship between burnout and locus of control, it can be divided into internal and external controllers according to the individual attribution method that controls the job stress situation, that is, according to the position of control of individual members, and internal controllers attribute success or failure to internal factors, such as lack of effort, while external controllers attribute success or failure to external factors, such as luck or lack of opportunity. Internal controllers have higher expectations and beliefs that they can control external events than external controllers, so they respond appropriately in frustrating situations, but external controllers have a relatively low belief that they can control external events, so they are anxious and have a low need for achievement [29]. Therefore, it was found that teachers who received external control experienced emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment at a higher intensity and frequency than teachers who received internal control.

In studies on the relationship between burnout and self-efficacy, self-efficacy is commonly reported as an individual internal variable that lowers the degree of burnout caused by stress [30]. According to these studies, the group with higher self-efficacy compared to the group with low self-efficacy, physical and emotional exhaustion due to stress, as well as the tendency to depersonalization were lower, and the group with higher self-efficacy had a higher sense of personal accomplishment, resulting in lower burnout [30].

In the study of the relationship between burnout and ego-resilience, self-confidence, a subfactor of ego-resilience, showed that teachers who were accepting and self-confident had less psychological burnout [31]. An optimistic attitude was found to have a significant effect on all three subfactors of teacher burnout. It was found that anger control had a significant negative correlation with burnout. Through these previous studies, it has been reported that teachers with higher ego-resilience experience less burnout [31].

3.1.2 Situational factors

Regarding the cause of burnout, Maslach & Leiter [32] emphasized the importance of the work environment. They said that burnout is not an individual problem but rather a problem of the social environment in which they work [32]. Fielding & Gall [33] argued that situational factors have a major influence on burnout. In addition, several recent studies support that the job environment or contextual variables trigger teachers burnout in the school scene [14]. Previous studies on situational factors focused on finding the cause of burnout in the internal and external environments related to job performance. Also, Maslach and colleagues [23] subdivided the situational factors into job characteristics variables and organizational characteristics variables.

In the case of job characteristics, examining the relationship between burnout, role conflict, and role ambiguity, Schwab & Iwanicki [11] found that role conflict and role ambiguity could be the cause of teacher burnout. It was said that role conflict appears due to the difficulty and embarrassment felt by the role manager in performing the role, the ambiguity of their role recognition, and the conflicting expectations of the role manager with respect to the external role [11]. In addition, role conflict showed significant positive correlations with depersonalization and emotional exhaustion among the subareas of burnout, and role ambiguity showed significant positive correlations with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment, indicating that teacher role conflict and role ambiguity were related to teacher burnout.

Looking at the relationship between burnout and lack of challenging opportunities, Pine, Aronson & Kafry [34] reported that the less opportunities to be recognized for one’s abilities in the work environment or to be promoted, the more burnout is experienced. In other words, if you get an opportunity for an appropriate challenge in your job performance, you will work with a sense of self-efficacy and satisfaction with your job, but if you do not get a chance to take on an appropriate challenge because you do not have a chance to be recognized for your ability or be promoted, you can experience more psychological burnout.

Looking at the relationship between burnout and overwork, overwork refers to the amount of work that exceeds the time and ability given to an individual, and excessive work causes the most stress. Also, excessive counseling cases, time restrictions, and excessive work hours and workload were said to cause burnout [35].

Looking at the relationship between burnout and organizational climate among organizational characteristics, the closer the school organizational climate perceived by teachers was to open climate, the lower the degree of burnout, and the closer it was to closed climate, the higher the degree of burnout [36].

The relationship between principal’s leadership and burnout showed that teachers burnout was high when the principal’s leadership was bureaucrat-oriented and low when the principal’s leadership was people-oriented [37].

Regarding the relationship between burnout and school size, Maslach and Pines [38] found that there were less stress and lower burnout rates in the smaller schools. On the other hand, Russell and colleagues [39] found that there were the higher burnout rates in the larger schools.

In addition, bureaucratic inefficiency, parents’ irrationality, indifference, criticism from society in general, overcrowded classes, and isolation from the community have been identified as potential causes of burnout [40].

The causes of burnout, which have been examined through preceding studies, can be found in both individual and situational factors. However, since intervention at the organizational level can provide preventive support to a larger number of people more efficiently than intervention at the individual level, it is necessary to find the cause of burnout in situational factors that can be mediated at the organizational level in order to effectively alleviate burnout [14].

3.2 Outcome factors of teacher burnout syndrome

Looking at the outcome factors of teacher burnout syndrome, teacher burnout syndrome had a negative effect on various variables. Teacher burnout had a negative impact on job enthusiasm or school educational performance. It acted as a factor that prevented teachers from engaging in organizational citizenship behavior such as altruistic behavior. Also, teacher burnout had a negative impact on individual teachers and organizations, such as teachers’ departure from the teaching profession, intention to turn over, low job satisfaction, and decreased efficacy. In addition, it was said that teacher burnout had a negative effect on students’ adaptation to school [41]. Many studies have shown that teacher burnout has a close negative correlation with job satisfaction [2, 42, 43]. Maslach [2] said that job burnout as a symptom of physical and emotional exhaustion ultimately leads to job dissatisfaction, and Verbrugge [43] pointed out that job satisfaction is affected by the occurrence of physical and mental problems caused by burnout and stress. Cordes & Dougherry [42] found that employees who felt burnout about their jobs were less satisfied with their jobs.

In addition, teacher burnout syndrome has a negative impact on the quality of life of students because when teachers who form close relationships with students experience burnout, they spend less effort in teaching, avoid contact with students, and become overly stubborn or authoritarian [20].

3.3 Controlling factors of teacher burnout syndrome

Personal and job resources can be cited as moderating factors to mitigate the negative aspects of teacher burnout.

3.3.1 Personal resources

Personal resources refer to the individual’s level of awareness of their ability to control themselves and influence their environment [44]. In addition, it is said that the more personal resources there are, the higher the level of positive self-esteem and self-consistency with respect to goals, resulting in desirable results in various areas such as goal setting, motivation, work performance, job and life satisfaction [45]. These personal resources are seen as the main cause that makes the difference between the intensity experienced and overcoming stress and adapting healthily even under the same stress, so, personal resources have been studied a lot in teacher burnout studies and are positioned as a variable that has a great influence [46].

In particular, positive psychological capital can be said to be a representative personal control factor that regulates burnout syndrome. Positive psychological capital can be defined as a complex and positive psychological state composed of self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience that meet the inclusion criteria for positive organizational behavior, and if the degree of possession of positive psychological capital is high, life stress is reduced, the level of life adjustment is increased, and positive organizational behavior is increased, which increases job motivation [47]. Examining the relationship between positive psychological capital and burnout in previous studies revealed that self-efficacy was a moderating variable in the relationship between stress and burnout, and the moderating effect of self-efficacy in the relationship between role ambiguity and burnout was confirmed. The higher the resilience, the more active coping behaviors such as seeking social support were used when experiencing stress, and the resistance to external stress increased, and the effects of optimism and cognitive control as protective factors to alleviate burnout were empirically confirmed [48]. Optimism appeared to be a partial mediating factor in the effect of interpersonal stress on the depersonalization factor, a subdomain of burnout. These results showed that teacher burnout can be alleviated if teachers manage interpersonal stress well in school and have optimistic beliefs that interpret situations positively. In addition, it was confirmed that positive psychological capital significantly reduced personal accomplishment among the subfactors of burnout [49].

3.3.2 Job resources

Job resources refer to job contextual factors that play a functional role in helping job managers effectively cope with their job demands, contribute to appropriately reducing negative effects such as job tension, and ultimately achieve performance goals [50]. In addition, Hakanen, Bakker, & Schaufeli [6] emphasized that job resources are the physical, mental, social, or organizational aspects of work that can reduce physiological and psychological costs associated with job demands, fulfill their functions to achieve work goals, and cause personal growth, learning, and development. Among these job resources, we will examine social support, organizational justice, and guarantee of teacher authority that can have an important impact on controlling burnout syndrome.

First, social support is a variety of positive resources that individuals obtain through interpersonal relationships, including the expression of positive feelings toward others, recognition of others’ behavior, and interpersonal relationships that are helpful to others, as well as emotional comfort and problem-solving help, material support and services, and interpersonal relationships that allow members to feel belonging to a social network [51]. Social support has a structural aspect related to how many or what kinds of interpersonal relationships an individual has and a functional aspect related to how one evaluates and perceives the quality of interpersonal relationships [51]. Among them, there is a research result that social support in the functional aspect is important in predicting adaptation [51]. Even if social support exists objectively, it can be helpful in the process of adaptation if an individual perceives that he or she is receiving support, so the person’s perception of social support is more important than the social support actually provided. Other studies have also shown that perceived social support, rather than actually provided social support, has a predictive role in coping efficacy, adaptive outcomes, and psychological and physical well-being [52].

Cohen & Wills [51] argued that social support has a negative relationship with stressors and psychological burnout, so individuals under various stresses act as a buffer against psychological burnout. Demerouti and colleagues [50] argued that social support encourages the self-positive aspect when organizational members are unable to reflect on themselves due to stress, thereby reducing individual depersonalization and increasing the perception of personal accomplishment. It was said that psychological burnout increases when social support is low [53], and smooth conversations with superiors reduce organizational members’ stress and burnout [54]. As such, when teachers experience severe burnout, social support appears to be a factor that can mitigate the negative effects of burnout.

Second, organizational justice refers to the perception of organizational members about the extent to which systems and decision-making within an organization are being implemented fairly. It has been proven through numerous studies that the perception of justice alleviates the job burnout experienced by organizational members and that positive feelings about the job due to justice bring about job satisfaction [55].

Third, guaranteeing teacher authority can act as an important factor in controlling teacher burnout syndrome. Teacher authority can be interpreted in various ways. It is divided into teacher rights in a narrow sense, which means teachers’ educational rights and basic rights for teachers to conduct educational activities, and teacher rights in a broad sense, which includes not only the basic rights of teachers in education but also various conditions such as the status, life stability, and social environment that teachers in the teaching profession must be guaranteed in fulfilling their responsibilities and duties.

In the study of teacher burnout related to teacher authority, a study examining the effect of teacher violence by students and parents on teachers’ mental health and teacher rights violation showed a high positive correlation with emotional exhaustion among the subfactors of burnout. In addition, in the relationship between loss of authority and burnout related to the content of teacher authority, it was confirmed that the stress of loss of authority seriously affected burnout. The guarantee of teacher authority acts as a factor that moderates the decrease in job satisfaction due to burnout [56]. Also, the guarantee of teacher authority has a moderating effect of alleviating the deterioration in the quality of life of students due to burnout of teachers [57].

4. Countermeasures of teacher burnout syndrome

4.1 Passive countermeasures

Not trying to solve the problem or trying to get out of the situation can be said to be passive countermeasures. The passive countermeasures used by teachers to resolve teacher burnout syndrome can be divided into emotional coping, withdrawal, and avoidance strategies.

The first strategy is emotional coping. Teachers who suffer from burnout syndrome are emotionally battered and depersonalized to hate those around them [58]. Sometimes, they feel betrayed by the object that causes them to burnout, and they hate the children even though they do not express their emotions directly.

The second strategy is withdrawn behavior, choosing minimal education. In the complex relationship between students, parents, and teachers, the sense of mission to do one’s best as a teacher is recognized that it can sometimes threaten the teacher, and the position to educate within the legally guaranteed range, that is, to use the minimum education within the framework of the law as one’s own protection [59].

The third strategy is an avoidance strategy, such as waiting for vacation or not facing each other. As a result of analyzing the burnout experience of teachers, it was reported that the passive countermeasures used by the teachers were that there was no solution, or that they used avoidance methods such as waiting for breaks such as weekends and vacations, transferring to another school, and not facing the target that caused burnout. Vacation is not a method that teachers have found themselves in, but through vacation, they recover from the state of emotional exhaustion, and by diluting the state of burnout, they have the resilience to prepare for the next semester.

However, these passive countermeasures do not provide an appropriate alternative for teachers to overcome burnout, which can rather decrease teacher efficacy and cause more burnout [58].

4.2 Active countermeasures

Active countermeasures are to find ways to solve the difficulties and problems they are experiencing by using the human resources around them to overcome the burnout syndrome or by finding an opportunity for recovery. Active countermeasures used by teachers can be seen as positive relationships, healing through balance, and self-reflection and recovery efforts.

The first strategy is to establish positive relationships with fellow teachers and students. Establishing a positive relationship with a colleague teacher is to communicate with a colleague or senior teacher whom one trusts, discuss difficulties or problems they have experienced, and receive comfort, emotional support, and advice on problem-solving. Fellow or senior teachers have already experienced or are currently experiencing similar problems that the teacher is experiencing, so they can easily sympathize with the teacher’s burnout and provide appropriate support, encouragement, or alternatives. In addition, establishing positive relationships with students means that teachers open themselves up to students to solve conflicts that arise in relationships with students and naturally form positive relationships.

The second strategy is healing through balance. When burnout is a result of immersion, it is necessary to get out of the state of excessive immersion and maintain a balance between life in school and life outside school in order to overcome teacher burnout syndrome. In other words, it is a strategy to try to escape from excessive immersion by deliberately separating life inside and outside school and boldly breaking the extension link of school life. Pursuing such a balance between work and daily life is an important condition for becoming a professional as well as overcoming excessive immersion or burnout [60].

The third strategy is self-reflection and recovery efforts. In order to overcome burnout syndrome, teachers have opportunities for self-reflection or utilize know-how gained through various specialized books and related training. Teachers with expertise reflect on what they are doing in the process of practice, and this process of reflection enhances the perfection of practice. On the other hand, some teachers try to recover from burnout by actively participating in hobbies. Pointing out that modern society is a work-centered society and a leisure society at the same time, a leisure life is a way to lead a high-quality life, and participating in various leisure activities such as sports is a way for teachers who have strong teaching job stress to overcome this can be a way to recover from burnout. In this context, experiencing emotions such as social base or support by actively participating in the field of interest and feeling psychological happiness such as stress reduction and tension relaxation can be a way to recover from burnout.

4.3 Other countermeasures

In order to reduce and prevent teacher burnout, the individual aspects of teachers, the characteristics of school organizations, and changes in social and cultural awareness must be comprehensively dealt with, so solutions to teacher burnout syndrome can be sought as follows.

First, it is necessary to readjust or reduce work through research on teacher work analysis in order to relieve teacher burnout from excessive work burden. Based on these studies, it is necessary to readjust or reduce some of the teacher’s work so that teachers can concentrate on their original work, educational activities, without being exhausted.

Second, in order to form a warm educational community, it is necessary to internalize a mentoring program in which fellow or senior teachers with expertise are used as mentors to form ties and communicate. Teachers learn how to respond appropriately to problem situations from their fellow or senior teachers [58]. Most of the knowledge that is the basis for teachers’ professional performance is procedural knowledge acquired through trial and error experiences, so an apprenticeship-style transfer method in which experts with specialized knowledge are observed and imitated rather than acquired through books or texts is most appropriate [61]. From this point of view, active countermeasures that form close relationships with peers, senior teachers, and professional counselors will enable them to recover from burnout while at the same time transferring knowledge for professional performance and forming a supportive relationship of caring and supporting each other.

Third, in order to reduce and prevent teacher burnout, it is necessary to establish and operate teacher healing centers in each ministry of education, and to actively support. Through the operation of the teacher healing centers, teachers are protected from unreasonable infringement of teacher rights, and by creating conditions in which teachers can conduct educational activities with pride and a sense of mission, the purpose of ultimately guaranteeing student rights to learn can be realized.

Fourth, it is necessary to analyze the core competencies of teachers in order to strengthen their competencies. Teachers perform different duties according to their careers, roles, and ranks within the school, and while required competencies are different, the degree of mental and physical experience will also differ depending on the competencies teachers possess. Analysis of teachers’ core competencies will be a starting point to help teachers enhance their professionalism and help find ways to reduce and prevent teacher burnout.

Fifth, developing programs and content that can cope with teacher burnout is necessary. Teachers need to flexibly deal with situations that can cause burnout and provide support on how to deal with them appropriately. In other words, it is necessary to categorize and present parent and student counseling manuals, appropriate coping methods for uncontrollable situations encountered in school field, and prepare manuals for practical codes of conduct.

Lastly, it is necessary to reflect on the relationship between the school field, the local community, and parents, and strengthen training for parents on teacher burnout and protection of teacher authority. Through the results of this study, one of the causes of teacher burnout is the change in the way they look at teachers in the current society. This means that the social environment surrounding teachers has changed. If teacher burnout or protection of teacher rights is not an individual teacher problem, but an issue to be resolved based on social common understanding, parental education on the role of parents as educational consumers, their role as educational partners, and their responsibility as subjects of home education should be strengthened.

5. Conclusions

So far, we have looked at the characteristics, impacts, and countermeasures of teacher burnout syndrome in the education field. Teacher burnout syndrome has a negative impact not only on individual teachers but also on students, school organizations, and society as a whole. Therefore, active efforts are needed to solve the teacher burnout syndrome at the level of social organization. It is necessary to clearly diagnose teacher burnout syndrome, systematically manage it, and prepare measures to improve it. It is necessary for individual teachers to go beyond the passive countermeasures to overcome the burnout syndrome problem, utilize the surrounding human resources to overcome the burnout syndrome, and utilize active countermeasures such as finding an opportunity for recovery and various supports at the social, organizational level are needed. Through this, it is possible to solve the problem of teacher burnout syndrome and ultimately promote the development of education.

Thanks

My beloved family, thank you always.