Saliha Gökçe Özata

Kocaeli University

Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Education

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, with developments and changes in the area of education and instruction, expectations from teachers have increased. For this reason, teachers have difficulties in their own professional fields. Nowadays EFL (English as Foreign Language) /ESL (English as Second Language) teachers, along with teachers in other fields, have heavier responsibilities than before, and studies show that teaching is one of the most stressful jobs with compression to other occupations (Adams, 2001).  For example, the curriculum which is changed frequently, high expectations of students and their parents, students’ background and their cultural differences effect academic success of teacher, because according to these features teachers should plan each lesson carefully and consider all of challenges during lessons. When teachers encounter with these types of challenges during instruction period, they suffer from “burnout”.

The burnout among teachers is increasing day by day with necessity of using technology. Because the Information Age requires knowledge of using technology, teachers are responsible to know how they use materials of technology and they also should be aware of why they need technology. In these circumstances, using of technology has a significant role on instruction processes but it sometimes challenges to some teachers, also it causes teachers’ burnout; because, when they try to benefit from technology for their lessons’ subjects, they feel exhausted. However, use of technology helps teachers. To sum up, teachers’ burnout and technology are both positively and negatively correlated to each other.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Burnout is a feeling of always being tired because of working too hard. Burnout is an issue to be taken serious in the work places where human interaction is salient and very important (Özkanal and Arıkan, 2010). Like burnout, stress is also a part of reasons of working hard. Job stress, on the other hand, refers to the job related nervousness and anxiety, which affects human’s physical and/or emotional health (Netemeyer, Maxham and Pulig, 2005). There are many reasons which cause burnout and stress of teachers. Lack of adequate teachers resources, adequate time to deal effectively with students, as well as issues such as salary, lack of feedback for teaching performance, unclear methods of evaluation, lack of/insufficient peer support and dealing with colleagues, students’ misbehaviour and home life quality have also been mentioned as source of stress (Adams, 2001; Kyriacou 2001; Fimian 1987; Jenkins & Calhoun 1991). As it is pointed out by some researchers, teacher stress make cause a range of consequences ranging from physical, psychological, behavioural to emotional problems like fatigue, illness, absenteeism, poor job performances, alcohol and drug abuse, reduce job satisfaction, and burnout (Ray and Miller, 1991). On the other hand; according to Maslach (2003), burnout is the physical, mental and emotional exhaustion resulting from chronic job attrition. For example; among these reasons of symptoms of burnout, job satisfaction is correlated with burnout according to Koustelios and Tsigilis (2005) found a moderate to high correlation between job satisfaction and burnout.

Teachers do not have only positive but also negative perspectives about using technology.  To use of variety of education technology enriches learning environment in a way that students can learn effectively; for instance, computers are among the most popular instructional technology; so, teachers can benefit from computer during teaching process. That is why they have positive attitudes of using technology. On the contrary; some researchers show that teachers do not have positive attitudes towards computers and other materials of technology, and moreover, they have fears against using computer in their classrooms. In a study by Baylor and Ritchie, they found a strong positive relationship between teachers who have high degree of openness to change and the impact of technology on students’ higher-order thinking skills.

“Barriers to use technology in education include lack of teacher time, limited access and high costs of equipment, lack or vision or rationale for technology use, lack of teacher training and support, and a current assessment practice that may not reflect what is taught with technology^”. Despite all of these barriers to use of technology, teacher and students need technology at schools because of rapid changes in every area. Recent studies in this area indicate that effective use of education technology can help education system work better and more effectively. In a survey administered by Halderman, a majority of teachers demand using technology better.

METHODOLOGY

Participants

The aim of this study is to find out and survey teachers’ burnout, and determine attitudes and opinions of English teachers towards using educational technologies. The study was conducted in the spring term of 2010-2011 academic years. This study was conducted with 12 English teachers; 6 of them are working in the School of Foreign Languages at Kocaeli University, 5 of them are working at High Schools and one teacher is working at an Elementary School. The participants who participate to this research mostly female; 8 teachers are female, 4 teachers are male. Apart from their genders, 6 of them are between 40 to 49 ages, 5 of them are 30 to 39 ages, and one of them is 20 to 29 ages. One of the teachers who participated in the study has 21-30 years of teaching experiences, 3 of them have 16-20 years of teaching experiences, 5 of them have 11-15 years of teaching experiences, 2 of them have 6-10 years of teaching experiences and 1 of them has 1-5 years of teaching experiences. Majority of these English teachers were graduated from university but one of them has a master degree. This scale was handed teachers in their schools; before they started to answer the questions, they were informed about the purposes of the study and the researchers explained the importance of their participation in this research to determine teachers’ burnout and use of technology. Additionally, the researchers requested to answer the question honestly and correctly. The researchers also focused on the teachers’ feelings and emphasised on they should feel comfortable while answering to the questions.

Data collection tool and data analysis: In order to survey teachers’ burnout during the teaching and instruction process the questionnaire (see Appendix) including three parts, procedure was used as a material to collect data. In order to gain insight about teachers’ burnout and use of technology, participants were provided different questions of the questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of three main parts; the first part, part A, includes five questions about their life quality with five questions the researchers identified whether teachers are satisfied their life. In this part participants were asked to answer the questions by choosing one of alternatives from the given five: 1= Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=neither Agree nor Disagree, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree.

The second part of the questionnaire, part B, consists of twenty-two questions about teachers’ burnout and their perspectives of their job. Participants were asked to mark which alternative fit them. These alternatives are; 1=Never, 2= rarely, 3=Sometimes, 4=usually, 5=Always. For example; questions of this part deal with such situations “I feel disinclined from my job.” or “When I get up in the morning, I feel I could not bear my job one more day.” According to their opinions, teachers graded that type of sentences.

The third part of the questionnaire, part C, includes nineteen questions about teachers’ opinions and attitudes towards using technology for education process. Likewise first part of the questionnaire, grading type of part C is the same: 1= Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=neither Agree nor Disagree, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree.

The scale focuses on: usefulness, effort, interest, support, difficulty, effectiveness and openness toward using technology for education.

RESULTS

According to the data obtained from the questionnaire, researchers found out that majority of teachers are satisfy with their life from the first part of questionnaire; their averages of answers between 3, 2 to 4, 4 (4, 4 refers to teachers who are most satisfy with their life), also their teaching experience years do not similar to each other, the least teaching experience years is between 6 to 10 and the most one is between 21 to 30. Teaching experience years according to these results does not effect teachers’ life satisfaction. However; when considering their average of age, they approximately between 30 to 59 years old. For that reason; although they are not young, they do not complain about their life. They also agree with this opinion “My life mostly close to my ideals from many aspects”. Additionally, the teachers who are pleased with their life are working in High Schools or Elementary School.

The other five participants are not satisfied with their life according to result of first part of questionnaire, their averages of answers between 2, 6 to 2, 2 (2, 2 refers to teachers who are almost never satisfied with their life). Generally teachers, who are not pleased with their life, work in the School of Foreign Languages at Kocaeli University. Their teaching experience years are generally between 11 to 15 years and at least 1 to 5 years, at the most 16 to 20. Unlike the teachers who have more teaching experience years, these teachers who have less teaching experience years are not pleased with their life conditions. In addition to their experience years, their ages change about 20 to 49.

The second part of questionnaire relates to teachers’ burnout, so teachers’ answer to questions about their job. According to the findings, averages of 6 of 12 teachers’ answers are lower than 3, 5 which means they suffer from burnout very much. Most of these teachers are work in the School of Foreign Languages at Kocaeli University. The results indicate that younger teachers suffer from burnout more than older teachers. On the other hand, teachers who are working in High Schools do not suffer from burnout. Their average is between 3, 5 to 4, 5.

According to results of part C of questionnaire is about using technology, average of teachers’ answers are between 3, 5 to 4, 8. That finding is good for using of technology for education. In other words, these teachers have positive attitudes towards using technology. Even though some of them suffer from burnout, they prefer to use technology. Teachers who do not much suffer from burnout; they also have positive opinion about technology. Thanks to technology, they feel less stress, they emphasis on that technology help them during lesson period. To sum up; their ages, teaching experience years and work places affect too much to teachers’ burnout, but all of these features do not effect to use of technology. Whatever their ages or workplaces, they are on the side of technology.

DISCUSSION

The results of this study imply that the teachers who have 11-15 years teaching experiences more suffer from burnout than teachers who have 21-30 years teaching experiences. According to findings of a research conducted by Enisa Mede, the teachers having 11-15 years of total teaching experiences suffer more than  the teachers over 20 years of experiences. Therefore, this finding of Mede and the result of this study are parallel. Additionally, there is also similarity between our research and that research which was conducted in 2009 in terms of correlation between teachers’ age and burnout. According to our research; even though teachers are not old, they complain about burnout and their life satisfaction. The results of research of Enisa Mede indicate that younger teachers have higher level of burnout. Additionally; in the sight of relation between teachers’ age and burnout, there is a correlation between these two subjects but according to a research which was conducted on March 2010 by Özkanal and Arıkan, they found out that there is no correlation between burnout levels and age.

While participants who participate our study have positive attitudes towards using technology, according to a research which was conducted by Gömleksiz in 2005 majority of teachers who does not use computer in their classes, mostly use pair work, role-playing and information gap activities instead of using educational technology.

A research which is named “Use of Education Technology in English Classes” by Gömleksiz 2004 showed that the majority groups of teachers accept importance of technology like our findings in our research.

REFERENCES

Adams, E. 2001. ‘A proposed casual model of vocational teacher stress. Journal of Vocational

Education And Training 53 / 2: 223-223-246.

Özkanal, Ü.& Arıkan, N. March 2010. ‘Investigation of burnout among instructors working at

ESOGU preparatory school. Vol. 3, No. 1

Netemeyer, R. G., Maxham, J. G. & Pullig, C. (2005). Conflicts in the work-family interface:

Links to job stress, customer service, employee performance, and customer purchase intent.

Journal of Marketing, 69, 130-143.

Fimian, M.J. 1987.’Teacher stress: an expert appraisal.’ Psychology in the Schools 24: 5-14

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Schools 28: 60 – 70.

Kyriacou, C. 2001. ‘Teacher stress: directions for future research. ‘Educational Review 53 / 1:

27-35.

Maslach, C. (2003). Job burnout: New directions in research and intervention. Current

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Koustelios, A. & Tsigilis, N. (2005).The relationship between job burnout and job satisfaction

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395-414.

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(1995).

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3 Issue 2 Article 11.

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APPENDIX

Aşağıda yer alan anket sorularından elde edilecek bilgiler Kocaeli Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi bünyesinde yürütülecek bir çalışmada yer alacak ve katılımcıların demografik bilgileri kesinlikle gizli tutulacaktır.

1-Şu an itibariyle görev yapmakta olduğunuz okul:______________________________________

2- Evinizde size ait bilgisayar var mı? __________________________________________________

3-Cinsiyetiniz: Bay      Bayan

4-Bugün itibariyle hangi yaş grubuna dahilsiniz?

__ 20 – 29

__ 30 – 39

__ 40 – 49

__ 50 – 59

__ 59 yaş üstü

5-Eğitim seviyesiniz?

__ Liseden daha düşük

__ Lise

__ Üniversite

__ Yüksek Lisans

__ Doktora

6-Medeni haliniz ile ilgili uygun olan seçeneği işaretleyiniz.

__ Bekar ( hiç evlenmemiş )

__ Evli

7-Mesleğinizde kaçıncı yılınızı geride bıraktınız…

__ 1 – 5

__ 6 – 10

__11–15

__16–20

__21–30

__31–40

__41