Chapter 1 Concepts and Research Status
1 .1 Definition of Job-Burnout
Ever since Freudenberger put forward the concept \been used specifically on the job-burnout phenomena of people involved in people-helping occupation. Job-burnout is now divided into three sections: Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization and Efficacy. Such division is followed by most researchers.
1 .1 .1 The Static Definition of Job-Burnout
Some researchers study job-burnout from a static viewpoint. For example, Farber6 holds that job-burnout originates from the individual's recognition of the serious imbalance between his efforts and gains. Brill thinks that the characteristics of job burnout can be viewed from two angles. On the one hand, the individual has experienced good job achievement and higher emotional level in the same job context; on the other hand, without outside help or changes in the environment, it may be very difficult for the individual to return to the original state.
1 .1 .2 The Dynamic Definition of Job-Burnout
Other researchers term job-burnout as a dynamic process. For example, Cherniss thinks that job burnout can be divided into three stages. The first stage is stress. The individual is faced with long-term excessive emotional demand from their target of service, which brings imbalance between the individual's effective resources and his job demand. The second stage is fatigue. The individual has short-term emotional anxiety, fatigue and sense of burnout. The third stage is called \Coping\
individual start to put his needs in front of everything else and treat its target of service in an alienated and mechanical way so as to detach other people and reduce emotional input. At last, the individual discovers the great disparity between his actual job state and his expectation, which may lead to considerable decline in job satisfaction
1.1.3 General Definition of Job Burnout
Maslach and Jackson's definition of job-burnout is the most oft-quoted in numerous research literatures. Here job burnout is defined as \symptoms of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and efficacy in occupationalareas with people as the service target.\Emotional exhaustion refers to theindividual's excessive consumption in emotional resources which leads to emotionaldistress and total loss of occupational passion; depersonalization refers to theindividual's treating the target of service with such negative attitude as denial,negation, apathy and excessive detachment; efficacy refers to the individualsdeclining sense of competence and job achievement with negative evaluation of themeaning and value of one's job.
1 .2 Job-Satisfaction and Other Related Concepts
Job burnout shares certain similarities with occupational stress, depression andoccupational pressure. A one-on-one comparison may give us a better understandingof the definition of job burnout.
1 .2. 1. Job Burnout and Occupational Stress
Their difference falls into three parts. Firstly, stress refers to the individual'sshort-term adaptive process with psychological and physical symptoms. Whenoutside factors like working environment place a
demand on the individual that isbeyond the individual's effective coping resources, occupational stress takes place.Job-burnout marks the breakdown of the coping process. It's the result of long-term,persistent occupational stress. Secondly, occupational stress has a wider target area,anyone may experience stress through his job, but only those with a higherachievement motivation or occupational goals, or those whose self-expectationdiffers greatly from reality may experience job-burnout. Thirdly, job burnoutinvolves the formation and development of the individual's negative attitude andbehavior towards his target of service, organization and the job itself. Occupationalstress may not be paired with such changes in attitude and behavior.
1.2. 2 Job Burnout and Depression
According to Freudenberger, job burnout is job-related and apparently context-bound. Depression, on the other hand, is universal. Warr also thinks that depression does not have context limitations and demands while job-burnout is job-related.
l. 2. 3 Job Burnout and Occupational Pressure
Firstly, occupational stress adopts a uni-dimensional approach on the research ofstress reactions, while job burnout studies not only the individual's emotionalreactions under occupational pressure, but also changes in the individual's attitudeand behavior towards others and oneself as a result of occupational pressure.Secondly, occupational pressure usually originates from the individual's recognitionof the imbalance between the job demand and one's capacity. Job burnout, on theother hand, usually originates from the individual's recognition of the imbalancebetween the job input and returns, in which emotion plays a significant role. Thirdly,occupational pressure could be a simultaneous
reaction, while job burnout is along-term gradual process of development and evolvement.
1 .3 The Measurement of Job Burnout
There are numerous tools for the measurement of job burnout, among which the most influential and most commonly used should be the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). In all the published empirical studies on job burnout, more than 90% research papers and reports used MBI as measurement tools. MBI include three sub-inventories: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and efficacy, totaling 22 items. Emotional exhaustion sub-inventory includes 9 item, the depersonalization sub-inventory, 5 items. In these two sub-inventories, the higher the individual scores, the higher his level of burnout. The efficacy sub-inventory include 8 items, the higher the individual scores, the lower his level of burnout. These items follow a 7-grading system ranging from \\yearly\\a month or less\\monthly\speaking, individuals with a high level of burnout tend to score high on the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization sub-inventory and low on the efficacy sub-inventory.
1 .4 Research Status of Job Burnout
The research on job burnout can be divided into the following stages:
(1)Clinical research. In the early stages, most researchers were doctors like Freudenberger. Most of their research was conducted from a clinical approach, as intervention on job burnout cases. They seldom did empirical studies, nor did they care to establish a theoretical framework.
(2)Developmental research. Many empirical studies on job burnout
appeared in the 1980s. Researchers put forward empirical proof (statistics, questionnaire, interview reactions and clinical cases) on the working mechanism and intervention techniques of job burnout. They also developed standardized measurement tools.
These provided later
researchers with relatively precise operational definition and assistance in research methodology. The development of Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) has received universal acknowledgment among researchers and marked the beginning of systematic research on job burnout.
(3)Integrated research. At the present stage, most job burnout research is still limited on people helping occupations. Among all the variants related to job burnout, more attention is paid on job-satisfaction, occupational pressure, job expectation, personal relations in the work place, workload, etc.9
1 .5 Research Status of Teacher Burnout
Compared with burnout research in other occupations, teacher burnout claims numerous peculiarities. The homogeneity of the service target (students) is far larger than that of other occupations. Research shows that teachers are faced with much higher occupational stress than the average population. Are teachers more susceptible to job burnout? Most empirical studies to date didn't found enough evidence to support this. Teachers get similar marks as other professions on all three MBI inventories. But they exhibit a unique feature in time. Farber(1984, 1985) found that the occupational pressure and job burnout of American teachers exhibit different developmental modes in different stages. When viewed on a yearly basis, most teachers feel relatively moderate pressure and burnout; but when viewed at different stages of the school year, they show a clear type of changes, rising at September and October, declining at January, then rise at March and May again. Many demographical variations are closely connected with the onset of teacher burnout.
Many researches indicate that male teachers display a higher susceptibility to job burnout than their female counterpart; teachers under the age of 40 are easier target of job burnout than older teachers; teachers responsible for senior grades, or teaching large classes with large numbers of students feels j ob-burnout more easily due to high professional pressure. When it comes to the influence of gender upon the three dimensions of job burnout, consensus can only be reached on the depersonalization dimension, that is, male teachers in primary and middle schools gets considerably higher marks than their female counterparts. For the dimension of emotional exhaustion, some researches show that among primary and university teachers, females rate higher than males (Byrne, 1991)，but Anderson&Iwanicki (1984) found opposite results. Other researches indicate that gender distinctions are not significant in this dimension. Many researches found that younger teachers display higher levels of emotional exhaustion than senior teachers. In other dimensions, conclusions are different. In 1993, Pderabissi et al. found in a cross-cultural comparative study involving primary and middle school teachers in Italy and France that age place considerable influence on the dimensions of depersonalization and emotional exhaustion. Teachers in these two countries show considerable differences in the dimension of depersonalization before the age of 30; while after 30, such differences tend to decrease. On the contrary, in the dimension of emotional exhaustion, before the age of 30, the differences are not so apparent; after 30, such differences tend to increase. In addition, teaching experience, marital status, difference in class, grade and student type may also contribute to teacher burnout in general and different dimensions in particular.
Job-burnout could be traced to individual, organizational and social elements. Teacher burnout may take place when the above-mentioned elements combine to induce a perception of imbalance on the part of the teacher. Among these, the individual element, particularly personal
教师职业倦怠的研究状况毕业外文翻译
