Factors affecting teacher burnout: an example of EFL University teachers

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ---*--- ĐINH THỊ BƯỞI FACTORS AFFECTING TEACHER BURNOUT: AN EXA

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

-* -

ĐINH THỊ BƯỞI

FACTORS AFFECTING TEACHER BURNOUT: AN EXAMPLE

OF EFL UNIVERSITY TEACHERS

(NHỮNG YẾU TỐ LÀM GIÁO VIÊN CHÁN NGHỀ: MỘT VÍ DỤ VỀ CÁC

GIÁO VIÊN DẠY TIẾNG ANH Ở BẬC ĐẠI HỌC)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

-* -

ĐINH THỊ BƯỞI

FACTORS AFFECTING TEACHER BURNOUT: AN EXAMPLE

OF EFL UNIVERSITY TEACHERS

(NHỮNG YẾU TỐ LÀM GIÁO VIÊN CHÁN NGHỀ: MỘT VÍ DỤ VỀ CÁC

GIÁO VIÊN DẠY TIẾNG ANH Ở BẬC ĐẠI HỌC)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Lê Văn Canh

HANOI – 2014

DECLARATION

I certify that this thesis is entirely the result of my own work I have provided fully documented references to the work of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted for assessment in any other university or institution wholly and partially

Hanoi, 2014

Đinh Thị Bưởi

Second, my sincere appreciation is extended to all teachers at Faculty of Post – Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, especially who taught me TESOL methodology and research methodology Their lectures as well as their suggestions for teaching and researching inspired me to conduct this study

Third, my gratitude is expanded to all university EFL teachers of the university where I conducted this study for their enthusiastic and helpful participations in this survey

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic study

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL : English as a Foreign Language

ELT : English language teaching

TESOL : Teaching English to speakers of other languages TEFL : Teaching English as a foreign language

MA : Master of Arts

PhD : Doctor of Philosophy

MOET : Ministry of Education and Training

CEFR : Common European Framework Reference

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Teacher burnout levels based on the questionnaire 21 Table 3.3: Main factors leading the EFL teachers to burnout 22

ABSTRACT

Although teacher burnout has attracted scholarly interest for several decades,

it was not until recently the topic caught the attention of scholars, researchers and teacher educators in the field of English language teaching (ELT) This thesis reports on a survey conducted in a university in Vietnam to explore the degree of burnout among a group of university EFL teachers Participants in the survey were 33 EFL teachers of the researched university Two instruments of data collection used in this survey were questionnaires and interviews The findings of the survey show that burnout is an issue among EFL teachers though the level was just moderately high Factors leading to teacher burnout were low salaries, heavy workload, students, administration, collegiality, education policy, and family The study also provides some suggestions for preventing teacher burnout so that educational quality could

be raised

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

ABSTRACT v

TABLE OF CONTENT vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

3 Significance of the study 2

4 Research questions of the study 2

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Methods of the study 3

7 Structural organization of the thesis 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Definition of terminology: Teacher burnout 5

1.2 Teacher burnout vs teacher demotivation 6

1.3 Research on teacher burnout in general education 8

1.4 Research on EFL teacher burnout 10

1.5 Teacher burnout in Vietnam 14

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 16

2.1 Context of the study 16

2.2 Participants 16

2.3 Data collection instruments 17

2.4 Data collection procedures 19

2.5 Data analysis methods 20

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 21

3.1 The findings 21

3.1.1 Quantitative data 21

3.1.1.1 The levels of burnout experienced by the EFL teachers 21

3.1.1.2 Factors leading the EFL teachers to burnout 22

3.1.2 Qualitative Data 25

3.2 Discussions of the findings 32

3.2.1 Burnout level of the EFL teachers 32

3.2.2 Factors leading the EFL teachers to burnout 33

PART C: CONCLUSION 34

1 Recapitulation of major findings 34

2 Implications of the study 34

3 Limitations of the research and suggestions for future studies 35

REFERENCES 37

APPENDIX A I APPENDIX B III APPENDIX C IV

APPENDIX D V APPENDIX E VIII

PART A: INTRODUCTION

In this part, the rationale of the study is presented This is followed by the statement of the aims and objectives as well as the research questions and research methods that were used for the study Finally, the structure of the thesis is presented

1 Rationale of the study

Teachers play a central role in educational innovation Therefore, teacher motivation in teaching is of critical importance However, work stress has been reported to lead to teacher burnout, which in turn has had negative influences on teacher motivation Therefore, battling burnout in educational institutions is one of the most critical issues As with many human service occupations, teaching in the modern world is associated with significant levels of burnout It is true that the incidence of teacher burnout has received major attention over the last twenty years (Maslach and Leiter, 1999) Teachers have to be well-prepared, capable, skillful, and have creative ideas because they always must face enormous challenges in interconnected, competitive, global society The role of today's teachers is extremely comprehensive Teachers not only confront a heavy workload in teaching, but also have to cope with parental pressures, rapid changes in curricular demands, pressures from bureaucrats and administrators The consequences of these issues are teacher burnout and burnout appears to be a main factor in teachers‟ decision to leave the teaching profession in many countries Thus, measuring the levels of burnout and finding out factors leading teachers to burnout in the Vietnam educational context are necessary and we wish to employ preventive and restorative strategies to tackle the phenomenon early

In Vietnam, the problem of teacher burnout is mentioned in short newspapers and articles on the media only There has not been any in-deep study of the issue in specific situations That is the reason why factors causing teacher burnout are discussed vaguely, and it is very hard to deal with the root of the issue Many teachers, when asked about their job, said that they were bored with the job but did not know why they were Hence, this study is carried out

to the subjects of the English teachers at a university in Vietnam, with purpose of discovering at which level they fell bored, and factors leading them to burnout at the time of study

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The overall purpose of this study is to gain understanding of the issue of professional burnout among a group of Vietnamese EFL teachers working in one university Specifically, the following objectives were set up for the study:

a) to explore whether teacher burnout is a reality or not, and the current degrees of burnout of the teachers if this problem exists;

b) to find out factors leading to burnout among the EFL teachers working

in the surveyed university

3 Significance of the study

The findings of this survey will inform educational administrators and teacher educators of the degree of teacher burnout and the causes of this phenomenon The empirical evidence provided in this study is helpful in working out appropriate policies on teachers in an attempt to prevent teacher burnout thereby enhancing teacher motivation to teach, especially when the new policy on English language education is being implemented

4 Research questions of the study

With the above objectives, the research questions in this study are:

1 What are current levels of burnout among a group of EFL university teachers?

2 What are factors triggering burnout among these teachers?

5 Scope of the study

Teacher burnout is one of the most burning issues that needs to be studied However, the present study only focuses on the EFL teachers in a university

in Vietnam Furthermore, the study only focuses on finding out factors leading these teachers to burnout because this may help administrators, government, and even teachers to solve this problem

6 Methods of the study

In order to achieve the objectives mentioned above, this study is designed integrating both qualitative and quantitative research methods The quantitative part of the study reports the results of a survey, in which the

“Teacher Burnout Scale” (see Appendix A), which is designed by MacCroskey, Richmond, Wrench and Gorham (2001) was used to find out the degree of burnout among EFL teachers in the researched institution The qualitative part used interviews to identify factors leading to teacher burnout (see Appendix B)

7 Structural organization of the thesis

This thesis consists of three parts as follows:

The first part is introduction which included rationale, objectives, significance, research questions, scope, methods and organization of the study

The second part is development that consists of three following chapters: chapter one is literature review that provides a theoretical and empirical framework for the study by reviewing the literature on teacher burnout It commences with a review of definition of teacher burnout, proceeding to

examine teacher burnout and teacher demotivation More importantly, it researches teacher burnout in general education and with a particular focus on the key area that informs this study – EFL teacher burnout Chapter two explains the methodology and methods that have been used for conducting the research and for analyzing the data It includes a description of selection of the participants It also describes the two instruments used for data collection (questionnaire and interview) and outlines how the data was analyzed Chapter three is findings and discussions and which presented and discussed the results of the study

The third part is conclusion which includes summary of main points raised in the study, implications of the study, a discussion of the study‟s limitations and suggestions for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the studies on teacher burnout as a means of providing a theoretical framework for the study In particular, the chapter discusses previous educational researches on teacher burnout, especially EFL teacher burnout The discussion will highlight the need for a better understanding of EFL teacher burnout

To provide a clear picture for discussion of teacher burnout, the chapter commences by giving definition of teacher burnout The discussion then proceeds to teacher burnout and teacher demotivation, followed by teacher burnout research in general education With this backdrop, there will be a detailed examination of EFL teacher burnout and related studies In doing so, the discussion will identify the factors influencing teacher burnout

1.1 Definition of terminology: Teacher burnout

Maslach, Leiter and Schaufeli (2008: 90) defined burnout as “a psychological syndrome in response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job" This response is manifested through three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment These dimensions are explained in general setting by Maslach et al (2008: 89) as follows: the first dimension has been described as wearing out, loss of energy, depletion, debilitation, and fatigue The second dimension refers to negative or inappropriate attitudes toward clients, irritability, loss of idealism, and withdrawal The third dimension is described as depression, low self-esteem, low morale, reduced productivity or capability and an inability to cope

These dimensions were expanded by Horn, Schaufeli, Greenglass and Burke (1997: 372) as follows: Emotional exhaustion is characterized by a depletion

of one‟s emotional resources and the feeling that one has nothing left to give

to others psychologically Such feelings are likely to occur when teachers show strong involvement with the personal and social needs of students Depersonalization refers to indifferent, callous, negative, and detached attitudes towards students This is assumed that teachers distance themselves from their students to suffer their feelings of emotional exhaustion The third dimension shows a negative evaluation of one‟s personal accomplishments when they work with other people Teachers perceive themselves as ineffectiveness in their work, particularly with regard to teaching students (see Horn, Schaufeli, Greenglass and Burke, 1997) Cephe (2010) pointed that

if these three dimensions are taken as criteria to understand teacher burnout, it

is likely to conclude that a teacher suffering from burnout may display at least one of these dimensions For example, a teacher may easily feel emotional exhausted if he works forty hours a week This may lead to a decrease in job satisfaction The following reaction is that the teacher can find the feeling of personal dissatisfaction This chain of devastating behaviors may trigger burnout, which may end in even more devastating conclusions, like teachers leaving profession

In sum, teacher burnout is reflected in feelings of emotional exhaustion and apathy, physical fatigue, lack of energy, psychosomatic illness, increased alcohol and drug consumption, cynicism, inappropriate anger, depression and low personal achievements

1.2 Teacher burnout vs teacher demotivation

While there has been extensive literature on both teacher burnout and teacher demotivation, no distinction is made between the two concepts

Demotivation, as defined by Dornyei (2001 b), is a decrease or drop in level

of motivation It does not result from distractions of a more attractive option,

a gradual loss of interest across a period of time, or internal triggers Demotivation starts from an external locus, a demotivating trigger, before it becomes an internalized process, and motivation must exist before there can

be a subsequent decrease The manifestation of demotivation is “the lack of effort, need and desire in teaching process” (Aydin, 2012: 1)

Gavrilyuk, Loginova and Buzovkina (2013) state that,

… teaching represents nowadays a complex of increasing stressful situations that may have positive or negative consequences for them [teachers] as well as for students they work with Being unable to cope in an efficient way with these transformations, some teachers are becoming frustrated, dissatisfied, depressed, demotivated, hopeless, physically and psychologically depleted Teachers‟ coping unsuccessfully with chronic stress can lead to work burnout (p 52)

In other words, teachers who are unable to work in situations of extensive stress and work pressure are likely to become demotivated and suffer burnout Askar et al (1986, cited in Al-dyiar and Salem, 2013: 118) argue that,

Teachers‟ lack of interest in their work with students leads to teachers‟ burnout that makes them to teach students in a careless way In addition, teachers‟ burnout causes certain psychological syndromes such as pessimism, carelessness, demotivation, change resistance, lack of creativity in teaching and unjustified absence (p 118)

The above quotation can be interpreted that burnout is behavioural while demotivation is emotional Demotivation leads to burnout, and burnout leads

to further demotivation In other words, the relationship between burnout and

demotivation is circular Therefore, understanding and taking action against teacher burnout will help to retain teacher motivation

1.3 Research on teacher burnout in general education

Burnout is regarded as a serious problem among teachers (Horn et al., 1997: 372) Because teachers who are burned out were experienced as feelings of powerlessness in attempt to educate students and make school pleasant for students, lack of enthusiasm to prepare lessons, difficulty in motivating themselves to come to work, loss of energy, loss of memory and lack of interest in the subject (as cited in Mashhady, Fallah and Gaskaree, 2012: 372) Research on burnout among teachers has received considerable attention in many countries such as the United States (Bruce, PharmD and BCPS, 2009; Maslach, Schaufeli and Leiter, 2001), England (e.g., Maslach and Leiter, 1999), The Netherlands (e.g., Horn et al., 1997; Horn, Schaufeli and Enzmann, 1999), Turkey (e.g., Cephe, 2010; Öztürk, 2013), Canada (e.g., Fernet et al., 2012) The results of these studies show that teaching has been characterized as a stressful occupation There are a variety of sources that trigger burnout for teachers such as problems in society, e.g, the erosion of public respect for and support of teachers, problems in organization, e.g., classroom discipline, apathy, administrative insensitivity, bureaucratic incompetence, overcrowded classrooms, and inadequate salaries (Farber,

1991, as cited in Zang and Sapp, 2008: 155), and personal factors e.g., age, sex, marital status and educational status (Maslach et al., 2001: 409-410) These factors cause teacher burnout syndromes such as emotional and physical exhaustion, anxiety, and depression After that teachers may have some behavioral reactions such as tardiness, absenteeism, poor job performance, and lack of interest and commitment (Farber, 1991, as cited in

Zang and Sapp, 2008: 155) As a result, teachers who are burned out often have teaching ineffectiveness

Maslach and Leiter (1999: 2-3) showed some factors triggering teacher burnout: (1) Teachers are pressed to do more work with fewer resources but they receive fewer rewards and less recognition for their efforts (2) Students

do not make visible and significant improvements in a realistic period time (3) Pupils, colleagues, principal, parents, inspectorate, and central administration care more their high expectation than teachers‟ needs (4) Skeptical colleagues who are already burned out can have a detrimental effect (5) Unmotivated or undisciplined students are a crucial source of emotional exhaustion (6) School principals can function as administrative managers, taking no responsibility for affective or relational matters within the school (7) The poor relationship between teacher and pupils can be a problem with serious consequences both for the teaching career and for the learning outcomes of pupils The two researchers concluded that these factors lead to frequent absences, lowered commitment, episodic or prolonged illnesses, physical ailments, undue stress, and ultimately burnout and teachers leaving the job

In educational settings, burnout is regarded “a concern of many educators and

is frequently caused by high levels of prolonged stress related to excessive time pressure, weak relationships with colleagues, large classes, lack of resources, fear of violence, isolation, behavioral problems of students, role ambiguity, role conflict, limited promotional opportunities, lack of support and lack of participation in decision-making” (as cited in Toker, 2011: 116) Besides, Özkanal and Arikan (2010: 166) showed that when many teachers or instructors feel depressed in their workplaces due to some reasons, like stress, which affect their motivation and will for work negatively This causes

unhappy feeling and unwilling to work Toker (2011: 116) indicated that university academicians are potential candidates for burnout syndrome due to their relationships with large numbers of students, personnel, and administrators

Bruce et al (2009) revealed that factors contributing to burnout in educators are the work environment (competition, heavy workload, fearfulness, and dissatisfaction) Another research of Horn et al (1999: 91) which investigated burnout among 249 Dutch elementary and secondary school teachers identified that at interpersonal (teacher – student) level, teachers get to higher burnout levels because of low outcomes from students, at organizational (teacher – school) level, teachers get to higher burnout levels because schools give low investments

In sum, the studies which are above presented showed that teacher burnout received major attention of many researchers The factors leading teachers to burnout were shown clearly

1.4 Research on EFL teacher burnout

Although the issue of teacher burnout was first studied among general education teachers, scholars, researchers, and teacher educators in the field of English language education have recently been interested in studying the issue

of burnout among EFL teachers (e.g Ganizadeh and Ghonsoody, 2014; Motallebzadeh and Ashraf, 2014; Vaezi and Fallah, 2011)

Like general education teacher burnout, EFL teacher burnout is influenced by the environment and by personal interests Afsaneh and Behzad‟s (2014) study indicated that EFL teacher burnout is associated with external and uncontrollable attributions The results of Cephe‟s (2010) research showed that all the English instructors with a higher degree of burnout display all the symptoms of burnout These symptoms were presented by researchers

Maslach et al (2008) namely depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and reduced personal accomplishment Besides, the English instructors with a high level of burnout display „Alienation to professional identity‟

Ghonsooly and Raeesi (2012: 122) stated that there are a fairly large number

of English language teachers suffering from burnout This is widely believed

to be a by-product of workload They also indicated that there are many studies conducted to uncover the murky points of EFL teachers leaving profession However, quite a few factors were found to play a crucial role in triggering burnout among English teachers

Vaezi and Fallah (2011) used questionnaires to investigate the relationship between self-efficacy and stress among 108 Iranian EFL teachers and found a strong correlation between teachers‟ perceived self-efficacy and burnout These authors concluded that enhancing teachers‟ self-efficacy and developing their skills in monitoring their stress tend to help to prevent or reduce teacher burnout

Cephe (2010) studied 37 EFL teachers in the English preparatory school of a University in Turkey Through questionnaires and interviews he uncovered 18 EFL teachers (48.6%) displaying a high degree of burnout Also he revealed four groups of factors leading English teacher to burnout: the academic factors (e.g., lack of in-service training, extra work burden and need for a supervisor), the administrative factors (e.g., rudeness, indifference to the problems, rules without explanation, incompetency, and detachment), the governmental factors (e.g., low salaries, economic conditions and no civil supporting association) and the personal factor (e.g., reduced personal accomplishment, loneliness in professional development, doubtful about career choice and emotional exhaustion) Ultimately, he concluded that major factors of EFL teacher burnout are the administrative applications in

institution Öztürk (2013) used questionnaire and interview to survey 139 Turkish English instructors working at eight different state universities The findings showed that the level of burnout is moderate and major reasons of this burnout were heavy workload, students, and institutional problems

Other research of Jashidirad, Mukundan and Nimehchisalem (2012) studied this subject from a different perspective and he surveyed 28 English language teachers in Malaysia They used questionnaires to investigate the effect of gender on burnout level of the English language teachers The findings showed that in general gender has no an effect on burnout level of these teachers Azar and Reyhane (2014) conducted a study with 110 English language teachers from both private and public educational sectors in Mashhad, Iran Through questionnaires, the findings indicated that levels of burnout of the EFL teachers in private institutes are higher than that

in public schools

A study about job burnout of 86 English teachers is carried out in secondary schools of Wenjiang District of Chengdu and the city of Chongzhou, China

By using questionnaires and interviews the researcher showed that the causes

of English teachers‟ job burnout lie in external factors, such as unfair school policy, colleague pressure, student-management pressure, exam pressure, unfriendly atmosphere of the school, heavy workload, and internal factors, such as financial pressure, misunderstanding and lack of support from family, knowledge exhaustion, lack of skills in reflection and self-adjustment However, the burnout level of the English teachers in this institution is not very serious (Zhouchun, 2011)

Mukundan and Khandehroo (2010) conducted a survey research in which they questioned randomly 184 EFL teachers in primary and secondary schools in Malaysia The results showed that burnout is evident at high levels among

these teachers Moreover, this study pointed that age and workload factors related to burnout levels The two authors also conducted one other research

in 2009 They surveyed 120 EFL teachers in Malaysian primary and secondary schools The findings showed that burnout levels among the participants are high in all dimensions of Maslach et al (2008) This research also stated that gender, experience and educational level are relevant the presence of burnout dimensions

Bardakci, Dolas and Arpaci (2013) conducted a study by surveying 224 Turkish EFL teachers in a certain district One of objectives of this research is finding factors affecting the occupational burnout levels of the Turkish EFL teachers The results showed that gender and working years are irrelevant with their burnout levels However, the participants who take part in interviews indicated some other factors triggering burnout, such as dealing with overcrowded classes and doing things other than teaching, feeling overwhelmed with their students‟ problems, and the administrators‟ never-ending requests

Motallebzadeh, Ashraf and Yazdi (2014) also used The Maslach Burnout Inventory to survey 200 experienced Iranian EFL university teachers The result showed that the participants‟ self-efficacy has a reverse relationship with their burnout In addition, a significant relationship was observed between teachers‟ age, gender, and their reports of burnout

In conclusion, this part shows the previous studies of the issue of burnout among EFL teachers to help the present study to have a theoretical background The researches which are above mentioned indicated that factors triggering EFL teacher to burnout also may be those leading teacher burnout

1.5 Teacher burnout in Vietnam

In Vietnam, teacher burnout has recently been reported despite the lack of empirical studies The issue has been frequently raised on the mass media For example, Nguyen Thi Binh and 26 other authors (2013) surveyed 6000 participants and concluded that approximately 10% to 20% of the surveyed teachers suffered burnout largely because of low salary and workload (Khánh

An, 2013) Another survey which was conducted by Vietnam Institute of Educational Science with 950 administrators and teachers in 36 primary,

secondary and high schools One of the questions asked was “If selected to another job, he (she) has chosen the teaching profession again?” The result

showed that about 50% teachers wanted to select another job for two reasons: low salary and work pressure (Vương Tâm, 2012) Vu Trong Ry, The author

of this study, elaborated the findings of this study and came to the conclusion that teacher burnout was caused by several reasons These included heavy workload (teachers had to teach 1.5 times or 1.8 times more than the norm of

40 hours per week), pressure from students, parents, and from educational administrators as well as pressure from the community Low salary and the morally distorted image of the teacher promoted on the mass media were also contributors to teacher burnout (Tô Hội, 2012) Tran Thi Bich Lieu (2013)

wrote on the Vietnamnet that asymmetric power and the lack of financial

transparency were factors that killed motivation of university lecturers

In conclusion, the literature review shows a great interest among international scholars in researching teacher burnout It is indicated in this literature review that, the number of studies on EFL teacher burnout is far smaller than those

on general education teachers Most of the studies on EFL teacher burnout that have been documented in the literature were conducted in Iranian and Turkish contexts This literature review also reveals the lack of empirical

research on teacher burnout in Vietnamese settings While there have been few studies on the issue of teacher burnout among general education teachers, research on Vietnamese EFL teacher burnout, to the best of my knowledge, remains extremely rare This gives rise to the need to explore the issue among Vietnamese EFL teachers in order to inform concerned authorizes of the need

to have sound policies to prevent teacher burnout This is the purpose behind the study reported in this thesis

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the research methods that were used for this study and

why those methods were chosen The chapter begins with some information

about the researched institute Then, the research methods, research procedures and methods of data analysis are presented

2.1 Context of the study

The university where this study was conducted is in a midland province in the North of Vietnam It is a pedagogical university with the student body numbering approximately 10,000 students The department of English was established 8 years ago to train bachelors of English language education The Department had thirty-five teachers of English aged between 24 and 52, with their teaching experience varying from two to twenty years At the time the present survey was conducted, two of the teachers were studying overseas for their Doctoral Degree In terms of qualifications, most of the teachers had completed their study for the Master‟s Degree in Applied Linguistics or TEFL with either Vietnamese or foreign universities In addition to training pre-service English language teachers, the Department was assigned to teach English as a minor subject to students of other academic disciplines Regarding teaching facilities, all the classrooms were basically equipped with little specially-designed equipment for learning and teaching English In terms

of class size, each class had an average of 60-80 students in the case of English as minor subject For English-as-a-major classes, the class size was smaller with 40-50 students in one class

2.2 Participants

Participants in this study were all EFL teachers working in one university in Vietnam (N= 33), where English was taught as a curriculum subject In terms

of gender, 23 of them are females and ten are males They are between 24 and

52 years old Their teaching experience varied from 2 to 20 years

2.3 Data collection instruments

This study aims to get the EFL teachers' responses to burnout level and factors leading them to burnout in a specific university to know reality of their burnout, which will enhance my own understanding and to share that understanding with others who may then carry out parallel work of their own This purpose of the study stimulates me to design the study as a survey research

In order to achieve the purpose of the study a survey research approach was adopted Questionnaires and interviews were used as data collection tools The overall purpose of the survey is to investigate burnout level of the EFL teachers and to detect factors leading them to burnout The reasons that the researcher uses this method are as follows:

Firstly, questionnaire data are particularly appropriate to quantitative, statistical analysis Since all the informants answer the same questions, the data collected are easy to be summarized, analyzed, tabulated and reported (Wilson and Maclean, 1994; Brown and Rodgers, 2002; Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2007) Furthermore, the subjects are free to state out their ideas without having to worry about personal information leaked From this source, more uniform and accurate data may be collected (Dörnyei, 2003) Therefore, the researcher used this method to find out the teachers‟ burnout level

The questionnaire used in this study is the “Teacher Burnout Scale” (see Appendix A) developed by MacCroskey et al (2001) to identify teachers suffering from burnout The researchers found reliability score of this scale as 89 in their pilot study which was conducted in a similar context to the present research setting Moreover, this scale was utilized in study of Cephe (2010)

and in the research of Öztürk (2013) In this study, the original English

version of the scale was utilized It is a 5-graded Likert scale consisting of 20

statements

The second instrument of data collection for this study is semi-structured

interview Interviews are one of the most important sources of studying

information and this study was not a different circumstance They are used to

collect more in-depth information (Cohen et al 2007) The researcher applied

the method since it could explore in greater detail and in depth some

particularly important aspects and address other closely related topics Moreover, interviews are a popular research method because they are flexible

and participatory Semi-structured interviews are flexible because the

interviewer has the freedom to change some questions or the asking order of

the questions according to the reactions of the users Besides, interviews are

participatory since they require both the interviewer and the participant to join

in an interactive conversation This is a big advantage as compared with the

questionnaires because the interviewer can clarify what may not be clear

enough to him or her in the interviewee‟s responses The interview data can

be analyzed qualitatively or quantitatively or both depending on the

researcher‟s purposes For these reasons, interviews are more personal ways

of gathering information from participants than the questionnaires

For this study, interview questions (see Appendix B) were prepared by the

researcher to seek and gather detailed information on factors of burnout

perceived by the EFL teachers The interviews were conducted after the

questionnaire responses were initially analysed The purpose of the interviews

was to identify factors causing the teachers to burnout The interviews were

structured with one main questions and it is supported by 15 suggested

questions when the participants need suggestion These questions were

developed with reference to the findings of the previous studies which are reported in literature The language of the interviews is Vietnamese and they were conducted in the form of an informal conversation between the researcher and the participants – the EFL teachers

2.4 Data collection procedures

Firstly, the researcher invited 33 EFL teachers to participate in the study Short and clear explanations about the research‟s aims, requirements were provided beforehand Then, the „Teacher Burnout Scale‟ to the EFL teachers was either given to them in person or placed in their mail boxes Participants were assured that the data would be kept confidential and used for research purposes only Participants responded anonymously and were asked to mail the surveys back after five days All of the questionnaires were responded completely and returned

Secondly, after scoring degrees of burnout behavior in the „Teacher Burnout Scale‟, the researcher interviewed briefly with 10 teachers who had answered the questionnaires (see Appendix B for interview questions) to identify the out factors leading the EFL teachers to burnout These participants were shosen randomly for the interview All the participants were interviewed face

to face with the researcher for about 20-30 minutes during the office hours of the researcher from June 10th to June 25th, 2014 All the interviews were conducted in Vietnamese (see Appendix B) in order for the participants to fully articulate their views without being constrained by the use of English or

it helped them to avoid getting confused in understanding the English interviewing questions and giving answers to the asked questions Moreover, the interviews took place in an informal atmosphere, so that they felt free to express themselves All the interviews were recorded, saved, and kept secretly

by the researcher

2.5 Data analysis methods

Data collected from the scale and the interviews were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics All these statistics was processed by using Microsoft Excel Program 2010 then tabulated

In the survey questionnaires, the participants were required to mark the items

on 5-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” Four degrees of burnout behavior are described for the interpretation of the scale These four degrees are as follows:

1 20 - 35 indicates few burnout feelings;

2 36 – 55 indicates some strong feelings of burnout;

3 56 – 70 indicates substantial burnout feelings;

4 71 – 100 indicates the individual is experiencing severe burnout

The scores obtained from the scales of responses were grouped under these four categorizations The analysis of the data interviews includes three stages:

“data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/ verification” (Miles and Huberman, 1994: 10)

In the first stage, interviews were transcribed in a narrative form The transcripts were read and reread meticulously and marked with brackets the passages that are important so that they could be reduced and then shaped into categories that could be displayed

Secondly, to find out factors affecting teacher burnout, I marked individual passages; grouped these in subcategories such as salary, workload, students, administration, collegiality, education policy, and family; and then studied the subcategories for thematic connections within and among them

Finally, in the last stage, conclusion and verification were made This stage showed the final results of the research in order to answer the research questions