An Investigation into Potential Causes of Burnout in TeachingCareers from the Perspectives of Iranian EFL UniversityInstructors

Burnout is considered a work-related syndrome made from a person’s recognition of a gap betweenexpecting success in professional performance and a less satisfying reality. Teaching, as one of themost stressful jobs in the world, makes a sense of burnout that disturbs the competency of teachers’personal and professional features, and it can be dangerous for themselves as well as their students.Recently, there has been growing research on the different effects of burnout, however, it is needed toinvestigate the causes of this issue, especially in university settings. This study aims to investigate thecauses of burnout in the teaching careers from the perspective of EFL university instructors. Theparticipants of the study were ۳۴ EFL university instructors from the institutions of higher educationin Shiraz, Ahwaz, and Jahrom, in Iran. The current study uses a mix- method design. Data wereobtained from two interviews (including a face-to-face interview and an online interview) with allparticipants. The participants were asked to answer ۷ questions that were made through a semiinstructionalinterview. The results of the interviews with the participants indicated that there were ۷main factors that cause burnout in teachers: financial problems, organizational and the environmentalproblems, teacher training difficulties, personal-family challenges, health problems, social traits, andaffective traits. The discussion of each of the causes of burnout represents how these categories causeburnout, and it was indicated that the financial problems, health problems, and social traits were themost important factors causing burnout in teaching careers. Consequently, Iran's educational systemshould formulate a plan to solve these problems and prevent burnout among university professorsbased on the factors mentioned in this research as soon as possible.

Keywords:

Burnout , Causes , EFL , Teaching careers , University instructors