Date Awarded

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

Education

Advisor

Megan Tschannen-Moran

Committee Member

Scott Baker

Committee Member

Reginald Wilkerson

Abstract

Teachers are burning out at an elevated rate following the COVID-19 pandemic and little research has been conducted to understand what is contributing to their burnout. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand what factors in the post-shutdown pandemic environment are contributing to burnout in veteran teachers (teachers with more than 10 years of teaching experience), and why some of these teachers subsequently decided to leave the profession. The central research question was, what factors are contributing to burnout in veteran teachers in the post-shutdown pandemic environment? The theoretical framework used in this study was the Job-Demands Resources theory. This study was conducted from a pragmatic worldview and borrowed elements of phenomenology, specifically the Reflective Lifeworld Approach. Participants were veteran teachers who quit teaching in the years following the pandemic, and they completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory Educators Survey (MBI-ES) before participating in a semi-structured interview. The results showed the factors that contributed to burnout in these teachers were lack of coherence, lack of student accountability, unsustainable workloads, and erosion of professionalism. The number of job demands on teachers increased and the number of resources either stayed the same or decreased, causing excess strain. The pandemic exacerbated underlying issues already present within the profession, and teachers no longer feel that society treats them as professionals. This study was an exploration of burnout in this current era and calls for administrators and policymakers to make changes to the field to reduce burnout and increase teacher retention.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.25774/w4-dyny-g291

Rights

© The Author

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