The project

  • Small scale partnership project

  • School education sector

  • Duration: 14 months (01/03/2023 – 30/04/2024)

  • Funded by the Erasmus+ programme by the European Union

“Burnout syndrome has been clinically characterized by a series of three subtypes: frenetic, underchallenged and worn-out,” explain researchers Jesús Montero-Marín and Javier García-Campayo, adding that it is “a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job.”

In other words, Burnout is a state that persists over time, leading the teacher to develop one of three coping mechanisms:
– Exhaustion: a state in which the teacher feels they cannot offer any more of themselves
– Cynicism: a distant attitude toward work, colleagues, students and other aspects of the job
– Inefficacy: a feeling of becoming incompetent and ineffective at the job

It scarcely needs to be said that this state is damaging to students, to teachers, to administration (which must deal with the stress of unhappy teachers and high turnover) and to the parents.

Although teacher Burnout has always been a serious issue, it’s gotten even more severe since the start of the pandemic. A poll by the National Education Association conducted in January of 2022 found that the number of teachers who are thinking about leaving has risen since 2020. More than half of teachers now want to quit or are thinking about quitting in the near future, the poll showed. Over 90% of the teachers in the poll felt that burnout is a serious problem in the teaching profession.

According to the recent research of the European association of school heads conducted in May 2022 – 66% of teachers want to leave their job and 41.3% of new teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years. Teachers also suffer from higher than average rates of drug and alcohol use. At any given point in time, 36.4% are likely to quit. 21% of those dissatisfied were unhappy with school administration leadership and 17. 21% were just unhappy with the realities of being a teacher Burnout syndrome happens when teachers, who typically get into the job with dreams of making the world a better place and helping others, start feeling exhausted, defeated, overwhelmed or even apathetic. They also overwhelming tend to feel under-appreciated by parents, students, school leadership, and especially the school districts. Thus, these teachers may start to feel that no matter how hard they work they will never move the needle forward or meet the impossible standards set for them. The stress many teachers are under leads to a number of terrible consequences like early retirement; Ineffective teaching; Drug and alcohol abuse.

With this project our consortium has the following objectives:
– To develop guidelines, self-assessment digital tool and to implement a programme to prevent possible Burnout syndrome among teachers in Bulgaria, Spain and Turkiye.
– To improve teachers’ mental health and well-being and to increase their stability and efficacy both as teachers and as individuals
– To support their holistic thinking on their resilience towards potential Burnout syndrome behavioural characteristics