Sources of Burnout Prevention for the Iranian EFL Teachers Practicing at Private Language Institutes

Teacher burnout and satisfaction are seen as organizational variables which may be considered as two sides of a coin and significantly influencing human resource potentials in a variety of contexts. Although they have been widely researched in different EFL contexts, there is still a room for further qualitative in-depth investigation of thephenomena in terms of underlying sources. The present qualitative research probed to posit a context-specific picture of burnout among Iranian teachers working in provate langauge instututes. The motive was to develop a local model of burnout for this specific group of teachers in the forthcoming studies. Unlike the teachers working in public schools in Iran under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, a variety of Iranian EFL teachers are admitted in private institutes, with a variety of occupational conditions which are mostly vague and mal-defined in terms of administrative conditions and supervision regarding human resource provisions. Consequently, fourteen EFL teachers working in different English language institutes in Iran were asked to brainstorm their ideas as what factors contribute to their burnout and sense of dissatisfaction in their job environment. Conducting a semi-structured interview with the participants, the researchers then transcribed and codified the data according to systematic steps of grounded theory – coding, cross-checking and stabilizing. The findings revealed that generally lack of cooperative atmosphere and teamwork as well as coworker s support together with lack of job security were the general sources of burnout.

کلیدواژه ها:

burnout ، EFL ، teachers ، private language institutes