ISTC 685

The Teacher with Many Hats: Increased Responsibility and Teacher Burnout

By: Ethan Young

October 29th, 2023

 Introduction

Background

Teacher morale and burnout has been at the forefront of the educational discussion in the

post-covid world. In a 2022 NEA sponsored survey, 55% of the educators who participated in

the survey cited responded that they were contemplating leaving the profession, with many

participants citing burnout, long hours, and a stressful environment as their primary reasons for

possibly leaving. (Rizvic) Another survey run by the American Federation in Teachers noticed

that a 33% jump in teacher dissatisfaction with their jobs (jumping from 41% “dissatisfied” in

2020 to 74% in 2022), noting that “stressful” is the number one description of their jobs, and that

workload and more responsibilities are the greatest cause of their job getting worse (Hart) This

feeling of stress, henceforth referred to as burnout, is defined as a special type of job related

stress which typified as a state of complete mental and physical exhaustion that involves a sense

of limited accomplishment and inability to feel hope or joy in ones’ job.

This burnout is starting to have a cost on the educational landscape: teachers have been

exiting the profession in record numbers: around 300,000 school teachers or 3% of the

population of the workforce have left the profession between 2020 and 2022. Schools are also

having trouble hiring and staffing their schools due to reduced availability of professionals; with

44% of public schools in 2022 reporting at least one or more vacant positions. (Dill) Even

amongst the teachers currently working, there has been an increase in the number of teachers

chronically absent from work (meaning having missed 10 or more days of teaching), with 29%

of teachers in one study found to be chronically absent during the 2021 school year. (Jones)
 Many teachers have cited that amongst many other causes of this burnout, a large factor

contributing to burnout has been the increased number and types of responsibilities that they

must perform in their job. (Rizvic) In terms of this study, responsibility is defined as a type of

task that a teacher must perform to effectively meet the expectations of their job. Teachers are a

unique profession in that they are expected to perform many different types of tasks throughout

their work week: teachers are expected to be not only educators and lesson creators, but also

work as social-emotional support, reach out to parents, work as chaperones, run school clubs,

and continue professional development, to name a very few. While some of these responsibilities

are voluntary and rewarded either monetarily or with accreditation, many of these are considered

part of the expected duties of a teacher. To what degree then, does the number of responsibilities

and time spent on them affect teacher morale and sense of burnout?

Statement of Purpose

The idea that increased responsibility in general contributes to burnout is obvious and

proven by the previously mentioned surveys. More work typically means more effort which

means more stress, but this study seeks to look at the type of work that teachers perform on a

day-to-day basis, and codify which responsibilities feel the most grueling for our teachers. The

idea would be to hopefully identify which responsibilities are causing the most stress for our

teachers, or at what level or amount the number of responsibilities lead to burnout. This sort of

information could be invaluable to county executives and administration in schools to start

repairing this blight on teacher morale. The purpose of this study, then, is to categorize and chart

these responsibilities by having teachers log their time spent on various responsibilities in their

work week, and then to ascertain at what point the number of responsibilities leads to

professional burnout through teachers completing a professional burnout mental health survey.
Literature Review

Even before the pandemic occurred, teacher retention and job satisfaction were issues

that were pressing and worthy of study. Burnout is often tied to the idea of professional

wellbeing, which is best defined in a 2023 study whose goal was to define teacher wellbeing and

provide a holistic framework for analyzing and studying this complex concept. This study

categorized teacher wellbeing into three different metrics: professionalism, teacher positivity and

“flourishing,” and teacher negativity or feeling inadequate for their role. (Ozturk) This is

important to understand in regards to the proposed study as burnout is specifically tied to this

idea of wellbeing. If a teacher is feeling overworked to the point of exhaustion, or doesn’t feel

equipped either personally or by their workplace to handle the demands of their job, then this

will affect their outlook on their work, their attitude with their students, and eventually their

professionalism if this struggle is not remediated.

With this definition of wellbeing in mind, there have been several studies into the cause

of teacher burnout, especially amongst urban school populations, middle schools, and other areas

that are considered high stress and high risk educationally. A sweeping and comprehensive six

year 2014-2020 study looked to pinpoint the causes of teacher burnout by interviewing and

surveying 934 K-12 educators. This is an important study as this provides a pre-Covid baseline

for causes of teacher burnout. Overall, they found that teachers who practiced emotional self-

regulation, enjoyed a positive workplace environment and relationships with co-worker, and

have a sense of self-efficacy (feeling good at their job) suffer least from burnout and have the

best sense of wellbeing. Teachers who internalize and exhibit negative emotions, or who

experience negative workplace environment (i.e. bullying from other teachers, lack of support,

feelings of isolation) tend to suffer from the worst burnout. The study highlights that schools that
had mutual supports in place for teachers were generally considered the most successful at

allaying teacher burnout. (Sohail) Overall, this is an important study as it provides a baseline and

general pre-covid baseline for the causes of teacher burnout.

Another important 2019 pre-covid study is one that focused on the possible causes of

teacher burnout by studying teacher self-reports and two observational measures on 255 teachers

in 33 different urban middle schools over the course of a year. This study is important as it

looked for if there were demographic or community causes for teacher burnout. This study also

focused on the causes of the teacher’s stress through self-reports, but also on the effects of their

“stress” and burnout on the quality of their teaching. The final report was that the most stressed

middle school teachers were ones who were white, female, and serving at lower income

neighborhoods, while the least stressed were teachers who felt close to their coworkers, had

attained some level of self-efficacy, and were receiving adequate resources from their school.

Interestingly, though outside the comparative scope of my study, they noted that the most

stressed teachers generally tended to employ the most effective teaching habits. (Bottiani) This

is a valuable study as it provides a baseline for most/least stressed populations, but the outcome

of the study was focused more on identifying these populations and instructional consequences

of burnout.

While it is important to establish a pre-covid understanding of teacher burnout, it is also

important to look at recent studies as the teaching landscape has changed since quarantine. A

study that investigated the topic of teacher burnout and stress was a 2023 Portuguese study that

recorded in-depth profiles on 1878 Portuguese secondary teachers who self-identified as either

burnt-out or not burnt-out, and studied the profiles of the two groups for similarity and trends as

to causes of burn out. The study and profiles focused on cognitive appraisal (a subjective
evaluation of the degree of threat in their school environment), the number of their

administrative tasks and responsibilities, their perception of student misbehavior, and their

perception of parent involvement in student success. This study found that all the above could

impact a teacher’s well-being negatively, it did not necessarily contribute to the feeling of being

burnt-out amongst teachers. (Mota) This is important as it does point out an underlying and

subjective cause of burnout, in that it is often tied to individual personality type and sometimes

clinical depression and/or other psychological or emotional disorders. While there is an argument

about the ability to handle stress and burnout being subjective, morale trends in recent times

show that there is significant shift in the teaching environment that has made these stressors

more apparent and impactful to teacher morale. This is worth exploring and codifying through

this study.

Another 2023 study on burnout that does focus on teacher responsibility looks at it in the

focus of teacher responsibilities and expectations versus the number of resources and support

that they receive from the school. Instead of numbers of responsibilities, this focused on the

responsibilities in terms of class size, number of classes taught, and especially classroom

management difficulties. The study looked at 260 elementary school teachers in the United

States and used teacher surveys on classroom statistics and emotional wellness to form the basis

of their study. The findings were that the greatest impact on teacher burnout was when a teacher

had a class with chronic misbehavior, and they felt that they weren’t being supported by their

school. The findings stressed that classes with co-teachers and support staff in the classroom lent

to mitigated burnout. (Sandilos) While this study did take teacher responsibilities and

expectations into account, the focus was on traditional classroom teaching and the active

teaching environment as the only area in which a teacher can feel professional stress and
burnout. The proposed study will instead focus on how the multitude of responsibilities outside

of teaching can impact teacher wellbeing and feeling of burnout.

Each study highlights the risk of burnout to teacher wellbeing and maintained that this is

a cause worthy of study. Each of the studies though, hasn’t looked at the number of teacher

responsibilities in addition to teaching as a possible cause for burnout. They instead have focused

on things such as limited resources, classroom management difficulties, or specific issues related

to the school and community. In each of these studies, as well, none of the expected results have

ever truly been what was initially hypothesized by the researcher. Stress, as with any

psychological phenomena, is a complex emotion with usually multiple causes that can be unique

to an individual. Regardless, this issue of “work creep” and the gradual increase in teacher

responsibility is a real issue, and one that hasn’t been studied directly thus far.

Statement of Hypothesis

There is a positive correlation between the increased number of responsibilities and the

feeling of “burn out” and decreased job satisfaction amongst educators. Responsibility number

will be defined as any task of different and separate job requirements, i.e. lesson and material

preparation =1 responsibility, instruction= 1 responsibility, student mentoring = 1 responsibility.

Responsibility is also subjective to the teacher due to differences in job descriptions (ie. the

content or grade level they teach) or extracurricular activities the teacher participates in, so a

strict coding will be made once all data has been collected. Burnout is defined as a feeling of

stress that leaves the teacher feeling a complete sense of exhaustion and hopelessness. The

teacher will have to meet a certain threshold on their mental health survey (specifically the

Maslach Burnout Inventory or MBI) to be considered burnt out.

 Methods

Participants

The participants of this study will be the teachers of Cockeysville Middle School, which

includes 62 members of the educational staff. This staff is predominantly female, with 68% of

teachers being female, while 32% identify as male. A large portion of the staff is Caucasian

(82%) with 12 % of the staff identifying as African American and 4% as Asian. Also, the school

has a balance of veteran (tenured) and new teachers to the profession (an almost 50/50 split).

This study will occur across three grade levels (6th through 8th grade) and include teachers from

every content department currently in the school: Social Studies, Math, English and Language

Arts, Foreign Language, Science, AVID, Fine Arts, and Physical Education. This study will

include teachers who are part of leadership, ie. grade level team leaders, but not teachers who are

content leaders such as department chairs, who have diminished teaching schedules due to

evaluation of other teachers being part of their scheduled duties. Also, this study will not include

members of support staff, members of guidance, library, nurse, or administrative staff.

This sampling was chosen as a convenience sampling due to the ability to organize and

institute this study with a complete population of teachers. This has its benefits and detractors.

As a benefit, this study will provide a comprehensive view of one complete school population

that can serve as a snapshot or review for the rest of the county, as it will include every member

of the teaching staff. As a detractor the school has different demographics and samples than the

rest of the middle schools in the county. While Cockeysville has a similar ratio of male to female

teachers to the rest of the county, the ratio of ethnicity is different (Cockeysville has more

Caucasian teachers than other typical schools), and Cockeysville has more veteran teachers than
other middle schools in the county. As well, the demographics of the students and neighborhood

are unique to the Cockeysville community, and will be different than other areas of the county

(Baltimore County is a very diverse county demographically).

Measures (more to come, added info from one section to here)

The MBI measures burnout in three main metrics: feelings of exhaustion, cynicism

towards their profession or workplace, and reduced professional efficacy. Furthermore, MBI

categorizes people into five categories based on their results: burnout (negative scores on all

three metrics) overextended (negative score on exhaustion only), ineffective (negative scores on

efficacy), disengaged (negative score on cynicism), and engaged (positive scores on all three).

(Maslach)

measures:
Be sure to describe what specific measures/instruments/scales you intend to use to
collect data. As part of the description, provide reliability and validity evidence to
support their use, citing sources. If you plan to use observational measures be sure
to plan to train and check agreement among observers prior to data collection, and
assess observer agreement throughout the study. If you are using interviews,
explain what questions will be used (the interview protocol), whether they will be
structured, or semi-structured, and how the interviewers will be trained.
materials:
Use this section to describe any materials used to implement the independent and
dependent variables (if quantitative or mixed-method), and any materials needed
to collect qualitative data. If there are instructional materials to be used for the
research, describe them as well. If that entails parts of the existing curriculum, then
specify that and cite the source. In your case, you may not have any materials
beyond your measures, so this section could be omitted.
procedures:
The procedures section is a description of all the tasks that the researcher and
participant must complete in order to carry out the study. This includes activities
such as obtaining consent, developing and implementing the independent variable,
securing and administering any dependent variables, analyzing data, and others.
The importance of this section is to communicate your understanding of the
logistics of your research effort and whether you have capacity to carry it out. A
reader who was judging the adequacy of your proposal would want to know that
you knew how to carry it out and had the necessary resources. Your explanation of
the procedures demonstrates that capacity and resources.
design:
The design section is where you explain what research design you will use. Is it an
experiment? A quasi-experiment? A pre-experimental, non-equivalent control group
design? A correlational design?
data analysis:
You have two tasks for this section. The first is to explain how you will describe the
data you collect to the reader. The second is to explain how you would test your
research questions using statistical analyses. You can review Patten & Galvan Part I
(5th ed.) and Mills & Gay Chapters 18 & 19 (12th ed.) for descriptions of descriptive
and inferential techniques. See Module III for more information.

Materials: Need time to think about this. More to come!

Procedures: Need time to think about this. More to come!

Design: Need time to think about this. More to come!

Data Analysis: Need time to think about this. More to come!

Timeline: This study will be carried out over the course of the 2024-2025 school year with

monthly data sampling.

Anticipated Outcomes: Need time to think about this. More to come!

References
Mota, A. I., Lopes, J., & Oliveira, C. (2023). The burnout experience among teachers:
A profile analysis. Psychology in the Schools, 60(10), 3979–3994.
https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22956

Bottiani, J. H., Duran, C. A. K., Pas, E. T., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2019). Teacher Stress
and Burnout in Urban Middle Schools: Associations with Job Demands, Resources,
and Effective Classroom Practices. In Grantee Submission. Grantee Submission.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2019.10.002

Rizvic, S. (March 13th 2023) “Teachers, facing increased levels of stress, are burned
out” New York Times, retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/education/teachers-quitting-burnout.html

Hart Research Associates (2022) Under Siege, the Outlook of AFT Members,
American Federation of Teachers, retrieved from
https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/media/2022/de-14326_aft_member_survey.pdf

Dill, K. (June 20, 2022) “Schools out for summer and many teachers are calling it
quits” Wall Street Journal, retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/schools-out-
for-summer-and-many-teachers-are-calling-it-quits-11655732689

Jones, S. (2021) Teacher Stress & Burnout: The High Cost of Low Social and
Emotional Development, Southern Educators Foundation, retrieved from
https://southerneducation.org/publications/teacher-stress-and-burnout/

Sandilos, L., Goble, P., Ezra, P., & Kane, C. (2023). Head start classroom demands
and resources: Identifying associations with teacher burnout. School Psychology.
https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000568

Ozturk, M. (2023). Unveiling the complexity of teacher wellbeing: A holistic

framework and its application in a systematic literature review study. Psychology of
Education Review, 47(2), 16–21. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpsper.2023.47.2.16