Burnout or Professional
Burnout Syndrome in education workers
El Burnout o Síndrome de desgaste
profesional en trabajadores de la educación
Ivon Alicia Tello Ayala [*]
ABSTRACT
Teaching
is recognized as one of the most demanding jobs due to the vast amount of
information that teachers must assimilate, analyze and transmit on a daily
basis. However, beyond this intellectual challenge, one of the greatest
challenges lies in managing the interpersonal relationships necessary to impart
knowledge effectively. Educators are constantly under pressure because of the
vital importance of education in society. Working with people, whether
colleagues, students or parents, adds an additional layer of complexity and
emotional responsibility. This constant interaction can lead to the development
of "Burnout Syndrome", also known as Burnout, which can have
devastating emotional and psychological consequences for the individual.
Burnout can lead to emotional disconnection from work, and even permanent
separation from work. In the most severe cases, it can trigger clinical
conditions that significantly affect the teacher's health. The purpose of this
article is to show the influence of this syndrome, basing the research on a literature
review on this topic under a qualitative methodology.
Keywords: Burnout,
stress, education, educational
institution, health, emotions
RESUMEN
La labor docente es reconocida
como una de las más exigentes debido a la vasta cantidad de información que los
docentes deben asimilar, analizar y transmitir diariamente. Sin embargo, más
allá de este desafío intelectual, uno de los mayores retos radica en el manejo
de las relaciones interpersonales necesarias para impartir conocimientos de
manera efectiva. Los educadores se encuentran constantemente bajo una presión
derivada de la vital importancia que la educación tiene en la sociedad. El
trabajo con personas, ya sean colegas, estudiantes o padres de familia, añade
una capa adicional de complejidad y responsabilidad emocional. Esta interacción
constante puede conducir al desarrollo del "Síndrome de estar quemado en
el trabajo", también conocido como Burnout, el cual puede tener
consecuencias devastadoras tanto a nivel emocional como psicológico para el
individuo. El Burnout puede llevar a la desconexión emocional del trabajo, e
incluso a la separación permanente del mismo. En los casos más graves, puede
desencadenar condiciones clínicas que afectan significativamente la salud del
docente. El presente artículo tiene como finalidad mostrar la influencia de
este síndrome, basando la investigación en una revisión bibliográfica sobre
este tema bajo una metodología cualitativa.
Palabras clave: Burnout, estrés, educación, institución educativa, salud,
emociones
INTRODUCTION
Burnout or
Burnout Syndrome, also known as Professional Burnout Syndrome, is the
consequence of a combination of psychosocial factors that have psychological,
emotional and physiological repercussions. The term burnout comes from English
and means exhaustion or mental exhaustion. It was coined in 1974 by the
American psychologist Herbert Freudernberg (Velez,
2016, p. 51). It is produced by exposure to chronic stress, but in turn differs
from it in certain aspects. "It is characterized by a state of emotional
exhaustion, a cynical or detached attitude toward work, and a sense of
inefficiency" (Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P., 2001).
Due to the damage it can cause and the number of people who suffer from it, it
was included in the WHO's international list of diseases.
Cases of
burnout are more frequent in health, education and other services that require
human contact, although it can also be suffered by people who perform other
tasks, such as writers and even housewives. The reason that this syndrome
manifests itself mainly in this group shows that the social factor is a
determining cause, and includes an important ideological component, resulting
from the relationship between the values and expectations of the worker and the
work environment.
Teaching,
due to the importance of education for the development of any society, is a
profession that requires a high degree of responsibility and dedication, so
that, almost always, the teacher is a teacher by vocation. Educating requires
skills that go beyond the mastery of the subject being taught; it entails
planning skills, mastery of teaching techniques and methods, leadership and an
emotional and interpersonal intelligence that allows dealing with people and
solving problems. In addition to these demands, the educational process is
carried out in an institutional context with its own economic, organizational
and cultural characteristics, which come into play to shape the so-called
educational environment.
In this
context, unpleasant situations may arise that affect teachers. The relationship
established between the teacher's characteristics and the institution's
guidelines influences the degree of comfort, approval and motivation, and
therefore has repercussions on the teacher's performance and the quality of
education. For these reasons, the study of this topic is relevant.
Zavala
(2008) defines the term stress from different perspectives and divides the
concept into two moments of suffering, one positive and the other negative,
both resulting from the individual-environment relationship. The first moment,
called eustress, comes from the effective adaptation of the individual to an
environmental demand, and the second moment, or distress, derives from the
failure of such adaptation.
Conditions
arrive in the distress phase, when the situation exceeds the individual's
ability to adapt to it, the first phase being positive and even motivating.
This definition breaks with the popular belief that stress is a negative
condition in its entirety. Figure 1 describes the general process under
increasing stress.
Figure 1. Human
function curve
Source: Zavala (2008, p. 69).
Regarding
work stress (Leka, Griffiths, & Cox, 2004, p. 3) defines it as "the
reaction that the individual may have to work demands and pressures";
further on they express that "stress is the result of the imbalance
between the demands and pressures faced by the individual (...) stress tests
the individual's ability to cope with his activity". It can be seen that
this definition is not divorced from Zavala's, since it does not conceive
stress as a negative response, but takes into account all its phases when
assessing a worker's ability to cope with an activity.
Therefore,
stress can be defined as the relationship between the individual and the
environment where the former's capacity to adapt to the demands of the latter
is put to the test. When this capacity becomes deficient, the individual may
feel overwhelmed by such demands and suffer psychological, emotional and even
physiological discomfort.
Burnout or
Burnout at Work Syndrome (BWS), also called Professional Burnout or Emotional
Exhaustion Syndrome, is, effectively, a response of the individual to
situations of chronic stress, therefore, it is a consequence of the condition
defined above in an advanced stage of distress. As mentioned above, it occurs
most frequently in jobs that require human social contact and is characterized
by a feeling of apathy, burnout and loss of motivation. Burnout syndrome is
often confused with depression, but the former is manifested only by the
situation that triggers it and the agents involved, while the latter is an
almost permanent state of apathy and discouragement.
According to
(Velez, 2016, p. 51) burnout syndrome "describes a psychological state
that appears after a prolonged period of exposure to psychosocial risk
factors"; the same author defines, based on cases of burnout in health
care workers, three dimensions that characterize it:
Emotional
fatigue or loss of emotional resources to cope with the job.
Depersonalization
or development of negative attitudes and cynicism towards patients.
Low personal
achievements or tendency to negatively evaluate one's own work with low
professional self-esteem appraisals
Although
symptoms may vary according to the person and the context, these
characteristics are the most frequent.
Martínez
Pérez (2010), in an article for Vivat Academia, differentiates between burnout
and general stress:
General
stress and Burnout syndrome are easily distinguished because the former is a
psychological process that entails positive and negative effects, while Burnout
only refers to negative effects for the subject and his environment. It is
clear that general stress can be experienced in all possible areas of human
life and activity, unlike Burnout, which, as most authors believe, is a
syndrome exclusive to the work context. (Martínez Pérez, 2010, p. 47).
The author
distinguishes between these two conditions on the basis of two criteria:
conceptual breadth and scope of action. In terms of breadth, she recognizes
that stress is a more encompassing term, since it includes, as seen above,
phases and has both negative and positive repercussions, while burnout is
essentially negative. According to the scope of action, stress can appear at
any time and place in the life of the human being, being the natural response
to environmental threats, and burnout, on the other hand, is an exclusively
occupational condition.
In
conclusion, burnout is a particular manifestation of advanced stage stress. A
stressed person can be easily distinguished from a "burned-out"
person by his or her attitude towards the work he or she performs, the latter
being apathetic, cynical and unmotivated, so it is almost inevitable that he or
she will have poor work performance and the quality of his or her work will be
affected.
According to
Gonzalez (2015, p. 3), who cites Jerry Edelwich and
Archie Brodsky (1980), there are four phases before acquiring burnout syndrome:
·
Enthusiasm
Phase
· The
worker is enthusiastic about the work, in which he spends a lot of energy and
does not protect himself from disappointment.
·
Stagnation
Phase
· The
employee observes that his or her expectations are not being met
·
Frustration
Phase
· As
work failures accumulate, the worker experiences a constant feeling of failure
that renders him inactive.
·
Apathy
Phase
· As
a consequence of constant frustrations, there is an absence of positive
feelings.
It is
presented in Table 1, according to Martínez Pérez (2010, p. 61).
Table 1. Symptoms of
Burnout Syndrome by domain.
Teaching is
ranked as one of the most stressful professional activities. Table 2 shows the
percentage of cases of clinical burnout by profession.
Table 2. Levels
of clinical burnout by professions
Source:
Taken from (Gonzalez, 2015, p. 18).
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The present
work was carried out from a qualitative approach, since, although some
statistical data are handled, the subject matter revolves around a problem of a
social nature, making the application of qualitative techniques such as
interviews and document analysis more convenient. Bibliographic-documentary
research was also used as a method of data collection, through reliable sources
such as books, scientific articles, documents, websites, among others, which
were selected based on the central idea of the syndrome in the presence of the
educational and professional sector.
The case
study was the research technique chosen to carry out this work. The case of a
teacher from an educational unit in Mitad del Mundo,
who suffers from burnout and whose name will not be revealed because she
decided to remain anonymous, was taken as a sample. To collect the information,
an interview of ten open-ended questions was applied to the teacher, focused on
determining the factors that cause the condition of the subject/object of study
and with the purpose of contrasting the theory collected with a real situation.
The answers were recorded on a smartphone and later transcribed accurately.
Interview
questions
What are
your expectations with your teaching work?
What is the
reality of your teaching work?
How many
hours per week do you dedicate to curricular activities and how many hours per
week to extracurricular activities?
What
activities do you consider unnecessary or requiring more effort than is really
important? Examples
How is your
relationship with your co-workers?
Is there
cooperation between the teachers of the different areas when carrying out the
teaching-learning process? Argument
How is your
relationship with your superiors?
How does
bureaucracy and institutional hierarchy affect your teaching?
How is your
relationship with students and parents?
What
physiological symptoms have you noticed since suffering this professional
burnout?
RESULTS
The bibliographic research was carried out
successfully, obtaining valuable information on the topic studied. Data was
collected from scientific articles, books and specialized websites, and these,
in turn, provided other secondary sources of great heuristic value, all of
which are included in the references section.
The case study did not have any inconveniences either.
The teacher was willing to collaborate with the research, answering all
questions and concerns with total sincerity.
The following are the interview questions and answers:
What were your expectations when you started teaching
at the institution?
My expectations were the same as always: to work hard
for the welfare of the students, to make the educational process as pure,
strong and scientific as possible, to create in the students a love for science,
to instill in them good habits and values. The same as I have always expected
from my job.
What is the current reality of your teaching work?
There was a stage, at the beginning, when I thought
that what was happening was a product of the normal process of adaptation, but
with time I understood that the reality was different. I found myself with an
institution that was structurally very well formed, but, unfortunately, what is
really important, which is the teaching-learning process, that students learn,
is neglected. More priority is given to parental criteria, advertising, the
school's image, and the last card in the deck is the class, the quality of
education.
How many hours per week do you dedicate to curricular
activities and how many hours per week to extracurricular activities?
It is impressive the load of extracurricular
activities that we teachers have. I do not disagree with this type of
activities, because they also influence the student's integral development; but
they are not the main part of the process. The class shifts, in the virtual
modality, are very short and I have had to dedicate a good part of those shifts
to these activities: taking pictures and videos to upload to the school's
Facebook, informing students of things they should already know, I have lost
entire classes; not to mention the amount of documents
and unnecessary planning that disassociate the teacher from his main task,
which is teaching.
What activities do you consider unnecessary or
requiring more effort than is really important? Examples
For example, having to fill out weekly plans after
having delivered the PCA and the PUD; tutors must compile these plans for each
of the subjects and generate another document which is sent to the Academic
Coordinator. As a teacher tutor I have witnessed the planning that they send
me, I do not want to criticize the work of my colleagues, because I know they
suffer this same workload, but they come repeatedly week after week, so the
work makes no sense at all, it is just protocol and unnecessary paperwork that
undermines the quality of the classes. I know it is important to celebrate
holidays and other dates, but it is too much time lost due to these activities,
I have lost four Fridays in a row so far and that prevents me from fulfilling
the planning I had at the beginning, I have to give content in less time and
that overloads the student and me. Also, the excess of meetings, some
necessary, but most of them could be solved by sending a communiqué; directions
are given that sometimes are not even reviewed, documents are sent to be made
that are not even collected, they are repetitive. Hours lost.
How is your relationship with your co-workers?
I consider myself a very sociable person, very
empathetic, I care and I help whoever I have to help; I do not want to be an
extremist and I know that when a person arrives new to a place sometimes the
adaptation process is hard, but so far the times I have asked for help I have
not been given it; I am not referring to all colleagues, there are valuable
people, but most of them work for themselves, they do not help, there is a
certain selfishness and elitism. They are professionals who often do not respond
to a greeting. It is very uncomfortable for me.
Is there cooperation between the teachers of the
different areas when carrying out the teaching-learning process? Argument
When an interdisciplinary project is requested from
the Ministry or from the authorities, we do meet by areas, by sub-levels, we
agree, but because it is an obligation; afterwards we do not even touch the
subject, in the end the work is individual. I consider that true integration
and cooperation does not exist.
How is your relationship with your superiors?
There are good superiors, who care and do an excellent
job; that is my opinion and I have let them know; people like the Academic
Coordinator deserve my respect. I have mixed opinions about the rest. I have to
accept that they are constantly sending information circulars to parents,
teachers, students, and it seems that they are always there, but when you need
help, when you require personalized treatment, they rarely respond. In other
words, the concern is, again, protocol, apparent.
How does bureaucracy and institutional hierarchy
affect your teaching?
There is an elitism, even teachers who do not occupy
high positions, but who have been working there for a long time, think they are
the big thing. Supposedly everything is very organized, very schematized,
everything under control, but when there is a situation like a student having
problems entering class or with the platform, they ask the vice-rectorate, the
vice-rectorate sends it to the DECE, the DECE sends it to the Academic
Coordinator, the Coordinator sends it to the tutor and in the end, nothing is
solved. I have not solved any of the problems I have had following the
hierarchy. Another problem is the platform, it is a unique platform of the
school, but there are problems with it, students complain, I have had problems
too and when I ask for help to the technician who attends it, the help never
arrives, he does not answer the messages or he answers and does not solve
anything.
How is your relationship with students and parents?
With the students is another story, I consider the
relations to be good. With the parents also so far. My concern in this aspect
is the academic level of the students, it is very low and they are used to
always pass and the parents are used to be approved; and as the school is very
interested in public opinion, they are used to not speak clearly, to consent
and to give away. Within the educational community, the teacher is the last
card in the deck, a puppet.
What psychological, emotional and physiological
symptoms have you noticed since suffering this professional burnout?
I feel quite exhausted. I am not the professional I
have always been. I love my job, I like to educate, however, I have made an
impressive rejection to the institution. I don't feel good, I go there out of
economic necessity; when I am there I do my job well,
because I respect myself as a professional, but I am not comfortable. I isolate
myself from others, which is not normal for me, as I said I am a very sociable
person, extroverted even, but the environment is so dense and uncomfortable that
I prefer to be alone. Insomnia, worry, I feel emotionally worn out. It's not
me, it's not really me. After reviewing the theory consulted and analyzing the
results of the interview, some points appear that encourage debate. Next, three
fundamental aspects to discuss are proposed, which will be approached from the
author's perspective; then recommendations will be offered to eradicate or
cushion the cases of teacher burnout.
A person is constructed from his or her past
experiences. The expectations of a human being come from the preconceived ideas
he/she has about a given scenario. The interviewee carries with her a series of
judgments, principles, values, and ideas about what education is, which make
her seek in her new workplace what she already knew or what she wants to know.
A person who presents herself in this way before a new reality should not be
labeled an idealist, because, to a greater or lesser extent, we all do it; we
are all containers of ideas that, only on certain occasions, coincide with
reality.
The institution, evidently, has failures, especially
in terms of priorities, and it is a serious situation which it tries to make up
for through an "efficient" administration and an image that makes
parents trust the service provided. The problem that derives from all this is
that it twists the true mission of an educational institution, which is, above
all, to educate. If the condition of particular support brings it closer to a
company that offers a service than to an academy, then idleness and burnout are
justified.
The term bureaucracy refers to the supremacy of a
system where hierarchical relationships and chains of command appear as the
center of organization and efficiency, leaving aside the simplicity and warmth
of personalized relationships. An educational institution, like any
institution, requires the cooperation of the different parts so that the whole
can function, so the rector depends on his teachers, and the teachers depend on
the technician and this, in turn, depends on the janitor, and so on, in order
to provide the service required by the students and parents, who, of course,
depend on the rector. If the links in this chain are not aware that they are
links, and that they only function if they form chains, then the purpose of the
educational institution is not fulfilled and it ceases to be relevant and
pertinent to society.
One of the causes of the interviewee's condition is
elitism and the difficulty of solving problems through the chain of command,
demonstrating how the malfunctioning of the system can tear the parts apart and
prevent them from fulfilling their functions correctly, thus affecting the
system. It is a dialectical relationship between the individual and the
institution, which can be studied in the light of any sociological model, and
it is up to the authorities to achieve a balance. If the institution allows bureaucracy
and hierarchy to cloud the judgment of the links and cause discomfort to the
parties, then the interviewee's burnout and burnout are justified.
The question we should ask ourselves at this point is:
what is the heart of the educational process, the students, the teacher, the
authorities, the Ministry of Education? Opinions may vary, but in my opinion,
and I agree with the interviewee on this point, the heart is the
teaching-learning process. This process, so often mentioned in the pedagogical
field, consists of two sub-processes which have a main agent: the teaching
process, with the teacher as the protagonist; and the learning process, with the
student as the most important agent; one, because it is necessary for him to
teach and the other, because it is inherent to him to learn. Everything that
surrounds this process is part of a set of activities, actors and conditions
called the educational process, which encompasses it, forming part of one of
its dimensions, the Pedagogical, together with the Administrative, the
community dimension, among others. Nowadays an educational institution cannot
be conceived without all the dimensions and it is understandable due to the
level of development of today's societies, but, it should not be forgotten that
the first academies were meetings of people in some city or on the outskirts of
town, and the first schools did not even have their own infrastructure, so the
answer to the question in question follows: the heart of the educational
process is the teacher-student relationship, the teaching-learning process.
Bureaucratic issues, the dense hierarchy, the
prioritization of image over substance, the over concern for public opinion and
the excess of extracurricular activities that divert efforts from the main
objective, generate an anti-functional climate, to which it is difficult or
impossible for good teachers to adapt; therefore, fatigue and burnout are
justified.
CONCLUSIONS
It is concluded that the best way to eradicate teacher burnout is to
prevent it, so educational institutions should include burnout in their
strategic planning as a problem to be combated from different dimensions.
In conclusion, bureaucracy is one of the factors that limit the speed
and effectiveness of the educational process; it also prevents the human
factor, as a necessary element in interpersonal relationships, from mediating
and, therefore, generates stress and, in the worst case, occupational burnout.
It can be inferred that training for teachers and administrative
personnel in the management of emotions is necessary in educational
institutions. These should include the presence of a psychologist specialized
in the subject. In conclusion, the fight against burnout should come from the
strategic planning of the institutions, establishing the values and priorities
of the institution, in order to align the teaching staff in the same
ideological path to achieve noble goals such as education.
REFERENCES
Gonzalez, L. F.-S. (2015). Burnout. Consequences
and solutions. Mexico City: Manual Moderno.
Leka, S., Griffiths, A., & Cox, T. (2004). Work
organization and stress. France: World Health Organization.
Martínez
Pérez, A.. (2010). BURNOUT SYNDROME. CONCEPTUAL
EVOLUTION AND CURRENT STATUS OF THE ISSUE. Vivat Academia, 42-80.
Doctors and Patients.com. (May 28, 2019). Doctors
and Patients.com. Retrieved from WHO recognizes burnout or
"burned-out syndrome" as a disease:
http://www.medicosypacientes.com/articulo/la-oms-reconoce-como-enfermedad-el-burnout-o-sindrome-de-estar-quemado
Velez, N. S. (2016). Historical and conceptual
elements of Burnout Syndrome. Archives in family medicine, 51-53.
Zavala, J. Z. (2008). Teacher stress and burnout:
concepts, causes and effects. Educación, 67-86.
[*] MSc. Technologist in human talent. Financial assistant at the Instituto Tecnológico
Superior Corporativo Edwards Deming. ivontello@deming.edu.ec