Teachers’ Work Engagement, Burnout and Interest: History
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Contributor:
Stefano Cacciamani
,
Donatella Cesareni
,
Caterina Fiorilli
,
Maria Beatrice Ligorio

Work engagement is a multicomponent psychological state characterized by a positive attitude and an energetic connection with job tasks and activities.

  • work engagement
  • burnout
  • ICT
  • school level

1. Introduction

Work engagement and burnout are considered, respectively, as the main resource and as a possible menace for teachers’ well-being at work. Previous findings [1] have extensively demonstrated that both these dimensions are interrelated, and they even affect students’ school achievement. Therefore, more research is requested to better understand how engagement and burnout are interconnected, so as to overcome inconsistent findings and contribute to understanding how to support teachers’ professional development in coping with stressful events. The current research investigates the relationships and the differences between work engagement and burnout considering teachers’ school levels. Recently, it has been also clear that the use of technology can play a role in determining both work engagement and burnout [2], thus teachers’ interest in ICT training is also included.

2. Teachers’ Work Engagement

Work engagement is a multicomponent psychological state characterized by a positive attitude and an energetic connection with job tasks and activities [3]. More specifically, when workers are engaged in their professional activities, they experience more vigor, dedication, and absorption in their work. These dimensions encompass cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects. While vigor refers to the physical energy and positive emotions devoted to the job’s tasks, dedication and absorption refer to workers’ mental energy focused on activities associated with task-oriented behavioral strategies [4][5]. Several findings confirm that teachers’ vigor refers to their investment in daily work tasks [6]. Teachers spend physical and mental energy to take care of the school environment, their mental resilience, and commitment. Teachers’ dedication can be considered an attitude towards their professional tasks carried out with responsibility and a sense of belonging to their institution. When engaged in new tasks, committed teachers care about work-related relationships (i.e., with students and colleagues) and experience enthusiasm and interest [7]. Yet, absorption corresponds to a cognitive and emotional disposition2, leading to high concentration and motivation, persisting while performing job activities [8]. Teachers’ work engagement is associated with several positive outcomes concerning work-related well-being. Dedication is a positive predictor of job satisfaction and, when associated with vigor, negatively predicts the intention to quit the profession [9][10].
Work engagement is also associated with high energy and mental resilience to face job challenges and persevere despite difficulties. Similarly, engaged teachers are more active and inclined to experience challenges [10], and show a positive attitude toward new learning opportunities [7][8][9][10]. Likewise, previous findings reported that engaged teachers positively impact their students’ motivation and academic performance [11]. Moreover, teachers’ engagement at work prevents absenteeism and sickness [12], reduces burnout risk [13], promotes good work-related relationships [14], and improves their performance as educators [15].
Teachers’ work engagement is expected to change depending on the job environment because of the different balance between job demand and resources [1][2][3][4]. Evidence supports the relevance of the school context and shows that school levels can be considered as a magnifying glass to understanding teachers’ attitudes toward their job [16][17]. Surprisingly, despite the considerable research on teachers’ work engagement over the last decade, no previous studies have comparatively investigated teachers’ engagement across grade levels. Researchers intend to fill this gap by looking at how teachers’ work engagement varies according to their school level.

3. Teachers’ Burnout: Menace to Their Engagement

Among several menaces to teachers’ work engagement, research has devoted huge attention to burnout syndrome, which is a psychological and psychosomatic distress affecting helping professionals, such as teachers. It can be defined as a syndrome characterized by exhaustion, which is a feeling of being overextended and depleted of one’s emotional and physical resources; cynicism, which is a negative, uncaring, or excessively detached response to various aspects of the job; and inefficacy, determining feelings of incompetence together with lack of achievement and productivity at work [18]. More recently, a new approach to study workers’ burnout, based on experienced physical and psychological levels of fatigue, has been developed [19][20]. This theoretical framework aims to consider how different sources of burnout contribute to the workers’ disease. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) [19] is a tool assessing three distinct dimensions: personal burnout, work-related burnout, and student-related burnout. While personal burnout refers to people’s general feeling of exhaustion in their private life (i.e., outside the work environment), work-related and student-related are dimensions associated with stressful events in the work environment (i.e., work demands and relationships with students, respectively).
Nowadays, teaching is one of the most stressful helping professions, demanding a wide range of emotional competencies (e.g., caring relationships with students and managing students’ maladaptive behaviors) and cognitive skills to adapt lessons for different students (e.g., students with learning disabilities). The most frequent stress-event sources for teachers are time pressure, students’ disruptive behavior, continuing changes in administrative dispositions, as well as complex relationships with students’ parents, co-workers, and school leaders [21][22]. Burnout is associated with teachers’ experience of a sense of inefficacy in facing pressures and difficulties connected to daily school events [23]. Burned-out teachers feel emotionally exhausted and with not enough energy to invest in school-life issues. They may also show a cynical attitude toward their job, leading them to disinvest in their professional role [24]. Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that the more teachers experience burnout, the more their vigor and enthusiasm towards their work-life were dramatically reduced [25][26].
Relevant findings are also showing the negative correlation between teachers’ burnout and their intention to either quit or continue working without investing in professional training or professional success [27]. Furthermore, teachers’ negative feelings due to reduced work engagement and increased burnout symptoms negatively impact students’ school achievement. Recently, a systematic review focusing on the effects of teachers’ burnout on their students’ school-related outcomes provided evidence of the negative impact of teachers’ burnout on the overall student achievement and motivation [28].
Scholars have abundantly investigated how burnout level changes across school levels [29]. A clear result is that teachers’ burnout risk increases according to the school level: it is low in primary school and it reaches its maximum at the high school level [30][31]. This trend was identified in several countries. For example, a Spanish study reported that secondary school teachers have a higher rate of burnout than their colleagues working at the primary level [31]. Similarly, Italian studies have revealed that secondary school teachers show higher exhaustion levels than their colleagues from lower school levels [27]. In contrast, only a few studies have found the inverse trend with primary teachers recording a higher burnout level than secondary school teachers (e.g., [32]). In any case, features of the work environments and personal variables may make the difference in being professionally exhausted or not. Based on these studies,  it can be understood that the impact of the school level is not always clear, and it needs to be further investigated.

4. Teachers’ Professional Development: Interest toward ICT Training

Teachers’ professional development represents the main road to acquire new skills at work and effective educational strategies to promote students’ achievement [33][34]. Teachers involved in professional development are more inclined to change their professional routine, adapt to new requests, and cope with professional challenges [35]. A relevant element of professional development is teachers’ interest toward new learning opportunities through professional training (e.g., [36]). Interest is defined as a psychological state that occurs during interactions between humans and their objects of interest. It is characterized by high attention, concentration, and emotion. As an individual’s interest develops in a particular area, emotions are accompanied by also developing cognitive components [37]. Interest elicits intrinsic motivation to engage in a particular content or activity [38]. Being interested “motivates exploration and learning, and guarantees the person’s engagement in the environment” [39] p. 257.
Nowadays, information and communication technologies (ICT) skills are greatly expected in teachers’ pedagogical repertoire. These skills are also considered a distinctive dimension of professional development through which teachers improve their knowledge, pedagogy, and classroom strategies. According to previous research [40][41][42], teachers’ ICT competencies refer to knowledge and pedagogical competencies about technology and its effective use during classroom activities. Teachers’ approach to ICT combines cognitive, emotional, and motivational dimensions, including knowledge, skills, interests, and self-confidence [43]. When teachers feel confident with ICT, they are more likely to generate a positive classroom environment, work on didactic subjects with pleasure, and, consequently, positively impact students’ learning [40].
Nevertheless, findings have shown teachers’ difficulty in introducing ICT at school. Studies investigating the association between teachers’ emotions and ICT use have found that teachers tend to experience negative emotions (i.e., anxiety, apprehension) when new technology is introduced in school [44][45]. Similarly, a negative correlation has been found between teachers’ ICT use in daily instruction practices and their well-being. Actually, adopting technology at work can be a source of stress–namely, technostress–characterized by fatigue, cynicism, and inefficiency related explicitly to ICT [44][46]. Likewise, findings reported that technostress is associated with teachers’ high burnout levels [47]. Technostress can be related to a sense of unfamiliarity with technology, malfunctioning devices, and continuing requests for updating and training about the use of technology [44][48][49]. Conversely, only a few studies found teachers’ positive feelings regarding ICT experience at school (e.g., enjoyment, happiness, engagement, and curiosity) [50][51]. Among the studies addressing this topic, [42] has recently found that teachers who experienced positive emotions towards ICT use in their pedagogical practices showed more autonomous motivation and high work engagement.
Despite the relevance ICT skills are gaining in contemporary society and in education, these skills rank at the fifth position according to teachers’ interests [52]. In particular, Italian teachers’ rate their professional interests toward ICT training lower than the European average (51% and 56%, respectively) [52]. This affects both teachers’ professional development and students’ performance. Other studies found that the use of ICT in teaching activities increases when teachers receive in-service specific training about it [53].
The introduction of ICT at school can have either a positive or a negative impact on teachers; therefore, it seems important to consider ICT training as a relevant resource to reduce the problematic effects of innovation at school. A positive interest towards ICT training could indeed favor teachers’ acquisition of digital skills [53], which can promote a more positive work engagement. Nonetheless, teachers’ interest toward ICT training remains unexplored in the current literature, both in general and in a comparative perspective across school levels.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/educsci12070493

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