Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
烧伤的情况下，一种新型的名为格林的美国作家，于1961年出版，主人公是一个成功的建筑师。取得了巨大成就，他突然发现了什么工作给他带来的是不热情或满足任何更长的时间，但一天到一天的精神压力，这是一种难以忍受的。经历了痛苦和折磨之后，他终于放弃了他的工作，逃往非洲的原始丛林，开始另一种生活。当时，这部小说引起了广泛的共鸣，在西方的专业人士，而它后，人们开始注意“职业倦怠”，社会发展所产生的一种心理现象。这是给这本小说对工作倦怠最早和最明显的直接描述，所以很长一段时间，人们认为工作倦怠作为一种非学术的“大众心理学”。，直至美国的心理学家HJ弗洛登伯格的提出“职业倦怠”在1974年第一次在一本杂志上，并用它作为进入该领域的心理健康心理学术语，术语“职业倦怠”，开始进入人们的看法。在1980年召开的第一次国际研讨会，对工作倦怠，它已成为流行的一个专业术语和相关研究也受到越来越多的专家学者关注。A Burn-out Case, a novel by an American writer named Greene, was published in 1961， thehero in which is a successful architect. Having made great achievements, he has suddenly foundwhat work brings to him is not enthusiasm or gratifications any longer but a kind of day-to-dayspiritual stress which is unbearable. After experiencing much pain and suffering, he finally givesup his job and flees to African virgin jungles to start another life. At that time, this novel caused awide resonance of professional people in the West, and it was after it that people began to payattention to "burnout", a psychological phenomenon arising from social development.It was this novel that gave the earliest and the most obvious direct description on jobburnout, so for a long time, people regarded job burnout as a non-academic "popularpsychology". Until American psychologist H. J. Freudenberger put forward the term "Jobburnout" for the first time in 1974 in a magazine and used it as a psychology term into the fieldof mental health, the term "Job burnout" started to come into people's view. With the conveningof the first international seminar on job burnout in 1980, it has become popular as a professionalterm and related studies have also received increasing attention from experts and scholars.
“Bumout”是一种常见的美国公众，尤其是指一个国家用尽的人从事在人类服务行业在心理学，心灵，情感，动作等字，因为这是超越个人的能量和顽固性需求外侧资源。一般来说，工作bumout当个体不能顺利应对工作压力的一种极端反应，也是一种疲惫状态，在情感，态度和行动作为长期和广泛的与工作相关的压力的结果（R，L.施瓦布，，1996）。在现代社会是一种职业病，工作bumout是广泛的各服务专业，如警察，医务人员，教师和等老师，是一个典型的服务行业，具有较高的工作bumout发病率。据估计，由美国心理学家法伯（1991年），约30％-35％的美国教师有自己的职业生涯的强烈不满，5％-20％的人曾在工作bumout的状态已经（Farber的BA，2000年）。"Bumout" is a common word for American public, which especially means a state ofexhaustion of people who are engaged in human service professions in psychology, mind,emotion, action, etc., because of intractable demands outsides which are beyond inpidualenergy and resources. Generally speaking, job bumout is an extreme reaction when theinpidual are unable to respond smoothly to work pressure, and also a state of exhaustion inemotion, attitudes and action as a consequence of prolonged and extensive job related stress (R,L. Schwab, 1996). As an occupational disease in modem society, job bumout is widespreadamong various service professions such as police, medical personnel, and teachers and so on.The teacher, being a typical service profession, has a high incidence of job bumout. It wasestimated by American psychologist Farber (1991) that about 30%-35% of American teachershad strong dissatisfaction with their own career, and 5%-20% of them had been in a state of jobbumout already (Farber B A， 2000). With the rapid development of China, the whole societygives increasing focus on education and expects more and more on education, too. At present,Chinese basic education is experiencing development and comprehensive reform, in the processof which, teachers not only have to bear all kinds of pressures in work, multi-role and careerftiture due to the particularity of their profession, but also have to be faced with a number ofproblems like reflection and reconstruction of educational concepts, knowledge structure and professional conduct, as well as issues of scientific research ability and self-improvement, andtherefore it's more prone for them to suffer job bumout. By investigation and analysis of anumber of cases, relevant institutions gave statistics of the top ten industries which are mostprone to encounter bumout, among which teachers ranked the third because of "low occupationalstatus, the lack of career development and much psychological pressure" and other reasons.
Some studies by experts at home and abroad showed that teachers in middle school hadpoor mental state in general, whose mental block was more severe than that of otheroccupational groups. As far as the subject is concerned, teachers who teach Chinese, English andMath scored higher in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization than other instructors (Dai,2006). However, due to particularity of English, it's more possible for EFL teachers to getinvolved in job bumout. As we all know, English is one of main international languages, and alsothe language which is most widely used in the world today. With continuous progress of scienceand technology, China's increasing international status in the world and Chinese continuouslyexpanding of open policy, more and more professionals proficient in English are demanded, soit's no wonder that people have increasingly recognized the significance of English, and attachmore and more importance to English. Furthermore, people can notice obvious requests andimprovement for EFL teachers' language proficiency in New English Curriculum Standardpublished and conducted by the State. All of these indirectly increases EFL teachers' pressure. Aresearch has shown that EFL teacher bumout is the most serious in emotional exhaustion,depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishments (Chen, 2009).
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Burnout
Bumout has been defined in many ways since the early 1970s. The word itself is a grassroots rather than a scientific term, coined to give name to a set of symptoms inpiduals wereexperiencing in certain settings (Maslach & Goldberg, 1998). So far, foreign researchers are stilluncertain about definitions of job bumout. Though, different scholars have different viewpointsabout bumout definitions, an widely-accepted definition does exist, which has been used widelyis given by Maslach and Jackson in 1986, that is, "bumout is a syndrome of emotionalexhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur amonginpiduals who do 'people work' of some kind." Emotional exhaustion is located in the centerof the concept of exhaustion and defined as loss of energy, the feeling of being psychologicallyoverloaded and the loss of inpidual's emotional resources (Cordes & Doughery, 1993).Depersonalization is the inpidual's treatment of the persons to whom heshe is proving servicein a negative, rigid or indifferent, manner (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Reduced personalaccomplishment, on the other hand, is defined as relatively losing the feelings of beingsuccessfully and adequately vain (Cordes & Doughery, 1993). This definition is also adopted inthe following study.
Chapter 3 Methodology........... 26-30
3.1 Purpose of the study..........26
3.2 Subjects of the Study.......... 26-27
3.3 Instruments ..........27-28
3.3.1 Questionnaire.......... 27-28
3.3.2 Interview.......... 28
3.4 Data Collection ..........28-30
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion.......... 30-40
4.1 Overall Situation of Teachers Burnout Situation..........30
4.2 Date Analysis based on Demographic Variables.......... 30-37
4.3 Unique Aspects for Female EFL Teachers ..........37-38
4.4 Interviews.......... 38
4.5 Summary ..........38-40
Chapter 5 Suggestions for Reducing Female.......... 40-44
5.1 Inpidual Efforts ..........40-41
5.2 Institutional Suppor.......... 41-42
5.3 Governmental Support ..........42-44
Conclusion
Teachers' bumout is a complicated phenomenon which needs complex solutions.Researches on bumout started earlier in foreign countries and they have made manyachievements, while in China, it just has got started and most aspects of it need improving andperfecting. Because of limited time and energy, the study just roughly probes current bumoutsituation of female EFL teachers, its potential causes and feasible solutions. Actually, we canhave a further in-depth discussion about it to find more effective measures and methods to solvethis problem. Besides, we can enlarge the study areas as follows: 1) Comparison and study onbumout between male and female EFL teachers; 2) Comparison and study on bumout betweenEFL teachers and other subjects teachers;: 3) Comparison and study on bumout among teachersfrom high school, junior school and primary school; 4) Comparison and study on bumoutbetween teachers form urban and remote areas.
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