First, the status quo of job burnout of kindergarten teachers in China
The so-called job burnout of teachers refers to an extreme reaction that teachers can't cope with work pressure smoothly, and it is the exhausted state of emotions, attitudes and behaviors caused by teachers' long-term high-level stress experience. A large number of foreign research data show that job burnout is most likely to happen to practitioners who help others. Teachers belong to the supporting industry that needs continuous and intense interaction with others. As a typical helping profession, preschool teachers are naturally prone to job burnout. Some domestic researchers have made some investigations on the job burnout of kindergarten teachers, which proves that the job burnout of kindergarten teachers is universal.
A questionnaire survey of 447 teachers in 50 kindergartens with different systems in Beijing by Liang Huijuan and Feng Xiaoxia from the School of Education of Beijing Normal University shows that 2.9% of teachers have serious job burnout, 59.5% have obvious job burnout tendency, and only 37.6% have no job burnout. Although the proportion of teachers who are in serious job burnout is low, there are still 59.5% teachers with "obvious job burnout tendency". The study also found that the job burnout of preschool teachers is mainly manifested in the following aspects:
1, physiological and psychological aspects
This aspect is the most obvious, 88.5% of the subjects feel that they are often in a state of fatigue; 86.7% of the subjects are always worried about accidents, and 65% of the subjects report that they are often upset and always want to be alone for a while.
2. Personal life
63.8% of the respondents think that work takes up a lot of their leisure time; 47.3% of the subjects feel that their temper at home is getting worse, and 55.9% of the subjects often get angry with their children and family for a little thing. Job burnout has affected the personal life of a considerable number of preschool teachers.
Step 3 work
65.6% of the respondents reported that they often look forward to getting off work when they go to work, so as to find a place to relax and relieve the tension caused by work; 7 1.0% of the respondents said they didn't want to talk about work after work, and 48.4% said they had the idea of leaving from time to time. 26.9% of the subjects regretted choosing the profession of kindergarten teacher; Some subjects even said that they wanted to change careers as long as they could find a job with a decent salary [1].
Second, the adverse effects of job burnout of kindergarten teachers
The research shows that if teachers' job burnout exists in a kindergarten for a long time, it will not only bring bad effects to kindergarten teachers themselves, but also affect the development of children and kindergartens.
(A), the negative impact of preschool teachers' job burnout on themselves
For preschool teachers, the negative effects of long-term job burnout are mainly manifested in three aspects: the physiological, psychological and behavioral effects of preschool teachers:
1, physiological diseases increased.
A large number of studies show that excessive stress will make patients' heart beat faster, blood pressure rise and endocrine disorder, which will lead to energy failure, skin peeling, digestive dysfunction, stomach disease, heart disease, stroke and other diseases. Among the occupational diseases of teachers, the incidence of pharyngitis and spinal diseases reached the highest level in history, 40% and 20%.
2, psychological and emotional instability, affecting mental health.
Excessive occupational stress will lead to negative emotional reactions, such as inexplicable anxiety, depression, melancholy, irritability, depression, anxiety, pessimism, self-pity, etc. This will weaken the moral and emotional norms of preschool teachers and reduce their sense of self-efficacy.
3. Negative behaviors have increased.
It is characterized by impulsiveness, lack of energy, emotional disorder, and decreased interest and enthusiasm. And serious situations are reflected in work such as slackness, corporal punishment of children, job hopping, early retirement and so on. The negative effects of occupational stress on preschool teachers' physiology, psychology and behavior are interactive and malignant. Excessive occupational stress will also have a deeper impact on the persuasion teachers themselves-job burnout. Once job burnout happens, they will completely lose their enthusiasm for early childhood education, and even begin to hate and fear early childhood education, showing an obvious tendency to leave their jobs, which will have a serious impact on the quality of education and teaching.
(2) The influence of preschool teachers' job burnout on children's physical and mental health development.
The so-called teaching is the interactive learning process between teachers and students, and teachers play a leading role. Especially for children aged 2-6, this role of teachers is more obvious. Eriksson's theory of stages of personality development points out that individuals go through eight stages from birth to death, and the smooth development of each stage provides the foundation for the development of the next stage. The first three stages are 1 ~ 6 years old, which are: basic trust to basic distrust, independence to shyness and doubt, and initiative to sin. The development of each stage is to cope with the life mission of this stage, which has both positive and dangerous aspects. Only when the positive factors overcome the negative factors can individuals transition to the next stage well [2]. It can be seen that if preschool teachers' own psychology is not perfect and their personality is deviated, it will have a direct negative impact on children. For example, in kindergartens, the relationship between kindergarten teachers and children is tense and uncoordinated, teachers are eccentric, overbearing and irritable, and their emotions are changeable. They don't respect children's personality, and even physically punish children, which will inevitably lead to children's inadaptability and disgust to teachers and kindergartens, and will also have a serious adverse impact on children's mental health.
(3) The influence of preschool teachers' job burnout on kindergarten and preschool education.
If preschool teachers have a sense of job burnout for a long time, they will have bad feelings and even think of leaving their jobs to seek other jobs. This will lead to the loss of kindergarten teachers. The loss of preschool teachers will lead to the turmoil of preschool teachers, which will affect the effective development of the most basic educational activities in kindergartens, bring immeasurable adverse effects to the healthy growth of children's body and mind to a certain extent, and also cause certain pressure to society. As the basic education of basic education, early education will affect the healthy development of the whole education system once the foundation is not well laid.
It can be seen that the phenomenon of job burnout of preschool teachers in China has existed at present, which has affected the healthy growth and development of preschool teachers, children and even the whole preschool education to a certain extent. Therefore, it is of practical significance to explore the influencing factors and countermeasures of preschool teachers' job burnout.
Third, the related factors affecting the job burnout of kindergarten teachers
(A), the impact of social factors
1, the social and economic benefits given to preschool teachers are low.
The economic treatment of teachers refers to the level of wages and material benefits given to teachers by society. The main basis for determining teachers' salary and welfare level is the labor form of teachers' profession. Marx once divided the forms of human labor into simple labor and complex labor. Teachers' work must receive special training and have special knowledge and skills, so teachers' work must belong to complex work and should be of high value. Some researchers (Farber, 199 1) pointed out that although the salary of teachers has been improving in recent years, it is still low compared with other professions; Teachers also generally believe that the remuneration from their labor is not commensurate with the lofty mission entrusted to them by parents and society, which makes teachers feel unbalanced and leads to teachers' job burnout. UNESCO pointed out in the "Proposal on the Status of Teachers"
"Teachers' salaries should reflect the importance of education to society, thus reflecting the importance of teachers and all the responsibilities that teachers shoulder from the day they start teaching; It should be more generous than the wages paid to other occupations that require similar or equivalent qualifications. "However, there are still many systems in China that have not been implemented, especially the salary of kindergarten teachers. With the progress of society and the improvement of parents' own quality, parents and society have placed higher and higher expectations on preschool teachers. Kindergarten teachers have a lot of work to do every day They should not only pay attention to children's eating, drinking, sleeping, venting and safety, but also be responsible for educating and guiding children with knowledge, skills and norms. We should not only consider the creation of class internal environment, but also deal with various problems in children's activities in time; We should not only be familiar with the general laws of children's physical and mental development, but also make teaching work plans according to the specific conditions of children in this class. The pay and return of preschool teachers are no longer equal, so from the perspective of treatment, part of the reason is teachers' job burnout.
2. Prestige and status of preschool teachers in society are low.
Social prestige is a comprehensive evaluation of the significance, value and reputation of a profession by public opinion, which is highly subjective. Professional prestige reflects a society's evaluation level of a profession, and then determines people's attitude of affirmation or negation, respect or contempt for this profession. In September 2005, a survey conducted by the Social Investigation Center of China Youth Daily through CCTV information showed that 56.0% of the national 1230 respondents thought that the social prestige of teachers had "declined" compared with 20 years ago. 36.4% people hold the opposite view that the professional reputation of teachers has "risen"; There are also 7.7% people who think that "nothing has changed". The survey also pointed out that the degree of respect for teachers decreases with the improvement of education level. "More respect" for preschool teachers, accounting for 30.0%; Primary school teachers are 25.2%; Middle school teachers are 23.7%; University teachers are the lowest, 2 1. 1%[3]. However, the author found that the social status of preschool teachers is still at a low level. Even some parents think that it is good for kindergarten teachers to coax their children, play games with them, take good care of their meals, help them get dressed and sleep well every day. But they don't know that kindergarten teachers have to write term plans and monthly plans, design daily education and teaching activities, have more time to observe and understand children, prepare activity materials, generate activity content, and cultivate children from their interests and needs. "No matter how good you are in kindergarten, you can only be a director at most. Besides, there can only be one director, and not everyone can be a director. It is not difficult to change the working environment and mix with a department-level cadre. " This sentence can also explain some reasons for the job burnout of some teachers.
3. The influence of new requirements and high expectations brought by social changes on teachers.
In recent decades, social changes and the educational reforms triggered by them have constantly put forward new requirements and expectations for teachers' profession, which has made teachers constantly face new challenges. These requirements and expectations also bring more and more pressure to teachers, which makes preschool teachers unable to effectively alleviate the negative attitude and behavior of job burnout caused by excessive work pressure.
(2) The influence of working environment and working system
1. The work in kindergartens is too much and too repetitive, which makes preschool teachers prone to job burnout.
(1) Too much desk work
Desk work takes up a lot of teachers' rest time, which is the most direct reason for the long working hours and heavy workload of preschool teachers. According to statistics, every kindergarten teacher has 17 kinds of desk work every semester, with various names, including lesson plans, cases, excerpts, plans, observation records, parenting essays, meeting minutes, scientific research, work summary, home contact, report requests, speeches, various teaching AIDS and so on. Many preschool teachers report that many desk jobs are repetitive and lack of pertinence, and they spend a lot of energy on desk jobs, occupying a lot of time for them to think, absorb new knowledge and create freely. It is understood that preschool teachers spend more than 10 hour on desk work every week on average, and 58.25% of preschool teachers often work in kindergartens at home.
(2) Large class size
According to the survey, there is a serious phenomenon of over-belt in kindergartens, that is, there are often more than 5-20 children in a class. There are too many children in the class, which will inevitably increase the workload of teachers. Faced with so many children with extremely low self-control, it is very difficult for teachers to organize an activity. Even for normal activities, it is very painful to stay in a noisy environment for a few hours, not to mention being distracted to prevent accidents. It can be seen that the work pressure of preschool teachers is very great.
(3) More business study.
According to the regulations of the higher authorities, kindergarten teachers must participate in professional training for a certain period of time every year in order to obtain a large number of certificates. To obtain these certificates, kindergarten teachers must take part in various trainings in their spare time.
(4) Attend more classes and play more games.
For several years, children have started classes and watched games every month. In addition, there are paper competitions, skill competitions and teaching aid competitions at all levels. Frequent classes and competitions make kindergarten teachers spend a lot of time and energy preparing.
2. The imperfect evaluation system of kindergarten and preschool teachers constitutes one of the reasons for preschool teachers' job burnout.
For a long time, educational evaluation has influenced the direction of preschool education and the ideas and behaviors of preschool teachers. If teachers' work is positively evaluated, they will devote themselves to their work with greater enthusiasm and energy; On the contrary, it will produce psychological burden and increase work pressure. At present, the evaluation system of preschool teachers in China is not perfect: first, there is no unified evaluation standard; second, the evaluation method is simple and unified. The results are basically reflected in the rewards and punishments for kindergarten teachers, and have not achieved the real evaluation purpose.
3. The way of kindergarten management system is also one of the important factors that affect teachers' mental health.
Some kindergartens lack democracy and care enough for kindergarten teachers who are the main body of people, which often affects the enthusiasm and enthusiasm of kindergarten teachers, increases work pressure, and thus produces burnout psychology. In fact, every kindergarten teacher wants to be appreciated by the leaders, and needs to give himself a chance to "recharge", but he can't get the real learning and training he wants, which leads to the unsatisfactory professional development of kindergarten teachers. And to some extent, it weakens the enthusiasm of work and leads to job burnout.
(C), the influence of personal factors
The personality characteristics of preschool teachers are also one of the reasons for job burnout. Relevant research shows that self-esteem is an important factor to control teachers' job burnout. Most people have a strong need for social support, so any event that feels rejected by society may be regarded as a source of stress. Moreover, people who lack self-confidence are more likely to feel threatened and have job burnout than others. Preschool teachers think that some things are beyond their control and blame them on fate, luck or others, which is more likely to form job burnout. At the same time, the public generally lacks a correct understanding of the profession of preschool teachers. Some people who have never been kindergarten teachers simply can't understand the profession of kindergarten teachers. They think it's easy to be a kindergarten teacher. They have winter and summer vacations, but they get a lot as easy as blowing off dust ... It is precisely because of the public's incomprehension and disrespect for the profession of teachers that teachers' job burnout is largely caused.
In addition, teachers' personal background factors also have an impact on their work. Such as teaching experience, education, experience and so on. Young teachers can't combine theory with practice well because of their lack of experience. The growth of children is by no means an overnight achievement, and it takes time to accumulate, because young teachers who can't see their work effects for a long time are prone to job burnout and lose enthusiasm; For teachers who have entered the preschool education industry for several years, there are two reasons for their job burnout: one is to repeat the monotonous life for many years. The working environment and living environment of preschool teachers are relatively simple. What you do at home and outside is similar. You should take good care of your children and educate them in kindergarten. Go home to take care of the children, educate them and do the same housework. Many teachers have lost patience when they get home, but educating children seems simple and rude. Sometimes it will affect teachers' happy marriage life; Second, through years of hard work, these front-line teachers have consumed a lot of energy and physical strength. If they don't become kindergarten managers or professional teachers, they will have a serious psychological imbalance. In addition, the work value of preschool education is not equal to certain occupations. For example, doctors and professors, with the growth of age, have rich experience and higher social value. At this age, kindergarten teachers begin to have a sense of crisis, and feel that they are not as energetic as young teachers who have just joined the work and are not as recognized as managers and professional teachers. They can't form correct values, and their work beliefs are passively shaken, resulting in serious job burnout.
Fourth, some suggestions to prevent and alleviate teachers' job burnout.
Job burnout not only affects preschool teachers' emotional and energy input, but also affects their educational ability and development; It not only affects the quality of preschool education, but also does great harm to the physical and mental health of preschool children and preschool teachers themselves, so we preschool teachers should try to avoid entering a state of job burnout. So, how should preschool teachers avoid entering a state of job burnout?
I think it should be discussed from three aspects:
(1) From a social point of view, we should do the following.
1, improve the social, political and economic status of preschool teachers.
(1) Early childhood education needs the protection of social legislation.
In a sense, preschool education needs legislation more, because preschool education is fundamental, and its role in national talent training, economic construction and social development can only be reflected in a relatively long time, far from being paid enough attention by governments and departments at all levels. Early childhood education needs legislative protection. It is hoped that while attaching importance to early childhood education, the government will formulate and promulgate the Early Childhood Education Law as soon as possible, so as to urge governments at all levels and education administrative departments to attach importance to early childhood education and standardize the important legal relations in the development of early childhood education, such as leadership system, management system, kindergarten management system, fund investment, teacher treatment and kindergarten qualification. Ensure the healthy development of preschool education on the road of legalization and standardization.
(2) Incorporate kindergarten education into the scope of compulsory education and improve the status and treatment of kindergarten teachers.
The degree and years of compulsory education mark the developed degree of a country. However, there is still a big gap between China and western developed countries in terms of the degree and years of compulsory education. Therefore, the society should increase investment in early childhood education and improve the running level of early childhood education. At the same time, strengthen the management of early childhood education institutions, publicize the significance of early childhood education to all walks of life, raise the attention of society to early childhood education, and make the work and status of early childhood teachers recognized and respected by society. Governments at all levels should increase investment in pre-school education, effectively improve the wages of preschool teachers, and at the same time pay preschool teachers' wages in full, without default, so as to improve their living environment. At the same time, the salary, medical care, insurance and pension of preschool teachers should be guaranteed by solid laws and systems. It is an important measure to improve the salary system of preschool teachers, improve their salary and treatment, and make their salary competitive in society.
2. Improve the quality of pre-service training and on-the-job training, and improve the comprehensive quality of preschool teachers.
With the in-depth development of preschool education reform, the contradiction in the field of education is becoming increasingly obvious. The intensity and speed of textbook updating have increased, and new advanced pedagogy and deep concepts have been widely spread. The content of preschool curriculum is increasingly rich and complex, and the modernization of preschool education curriculum has become an inevitable trend. The integration of curriculum objectives, the flexibility and diversity of teaching methods and the influx of modern educational technology all put forward unprecedented high-quality requirements for preschool teachers. Therefore, the society should provide more opportunities for preschool teachers, improve the quality of preschool teachers' pre-service training and on-the-job training, and thus improve their comprehensive ability. Only when the ability of preschool teachers is improved can they master new knowledge and skills, better adapt to the requirements of quality education, reduce professional pressure and avoid falling into a state of job burnout.
(2) From the perspective of kindergarten, we should do the following.
1. Teachers should create a relaxed and positive working atmosphere.
The growth of teachers is inseparable from a good environment. If kindergarten managers can create a relaxed and positive working environment for teachers, then teachers will feel not only the hard work and pressure, but also the happiness of professional growth and work. Therefore, respecting every teacher, trusting every teacher, guiding teachers to feel the happiness of work and experiencing their own happiness of success in work have become the starting point of kindergarten management. In addition, we should pay attention to the psychological counseling of faculty and reduce the pressure on teachers. Find more opportunities to talk with teachers, listen patiently to everyone's confidences, help teachers solve practical difficulties, and urge teachers to quickly reduce psychological pressure and work happily. In addition, after intense work, kindergartens should often carry out colorful entertainment activities to relax teachers' body and mind, enhance their emotions and unite people.
2. Give the teacher an objective and fair evaluation.
(1) Teachers' job evaluation should start from teachers' psychological feelings.
After a long time, people will naturally associate evaluation with scoring and queuing. It seems that the purpose of evaluation is to evaluate one, two and three. However, there is only one first. Such an evaluation method will undoubtedly hurt the feelings of most people and dampen their enthusiasm for work. Here, I think this evaluation method can be changed. For example, change the scoring evaluation to the usual discussion evaluation. Every month, with the teaching and research group as the unit, observe each other's environmental layout, educational activities, parents' homework, class-specific activities, etc. Then sit together, express their opinions, talk about their own gains and experiences, learn from each other's strengths, and the atmosphere is warm and relaxed. Evaluating equality and democracy can really promote the work.
(2) Teachers' job evaluation should give full play to teachers' main role and change principals into teachers' self-evaluation.
In the past evaluation process, teachers were passive evaluators and had no initiative. Evaluation time, evaluation criteria, evaluation methods and evaluation results are all in the hands of the director, and teachers can only passively accept them. This method can't arouse the enthusiasm of teachers to participate in evaluation, and the attitude towards evaluation is negative, sometimes even exclusive. I think kindergarten principals should first work out evaluation standards with all teachers, and then let principals and teachers conduct self-evaluation against the standards formulated by * * *, and reflect on their educational behavior in self-evaluation, adjust their educational strategies and constantly improve their educational practice. This evaluation method not only reduces the psychological pressure and exclusion of teachers in quantitative assessment, but also helps teachers to monitor their own educational behavior, find advantages and disadvantages in time, and clarify the true significance of evaluation. After teachers' self-evaluation, principals can find out the problems according to the evaluation results, and then organize teaching and research activities or professional learning in a targeted manner to promote the improvement of the quality of teaching guarantee and the sustainable development of teachers in the whole school.
(3) Advocate a cooperative, democratic and open teacher culture and establish a democratic management system in the park.
Because preschool teachers have lived and worked in a relatively stable kindergarten organization environment for a long time, they have become accustomed to doing things according to the rules, relying on textbooks and teaching reference materials, teaching according to unified content, and evaluating the quality of kindergarten and even their own education according to unified standards, thus forming a professional inertia thinking of seeking stability and not taking risks, and repeating the existing tacit behavior under this inertia. In recent years, the educational reform triggered by social changes has constantly put forward new requirements and expectations for teachers' profession, which makes teachers face new challenges. All these provide opportunities for teachers' professional development, but at the same time, they also impact the formed educational inertia and bring great work pressure to teachers. The new curriculum reform embodies the trend of curriculum integration, emphasizing inter-disciplinary cooperation and exchange; Emphasize the connection between curriculum and children's life experience. In fact, it is a requirement for cooperative teaching, collaborative teaching and team spirit among teachers. Therefore, kindergartens should create a cultural atmosphere of teachers' cooperative research, establish reasonable rules and regulations and good interpersonal relationships, so as to promote the development of every kindergarten teacher.
(C), from the kindergarten teachers themselves, should do the following.
1, and strive to form their own professional expertise
In kindergartens, those kindergarten teachers who are always enthusiastic about their work and have a strong sense of professional pride are mostly because they have their own specialties in early childhood education, such as teaching specialties-they have formed their own specialties in language, computing, art, music and other teaching, and some teachers have their own advantages not only in this kindergarten, this city, but even in the whole province; Some teachers have their own specialties in early childhood education research, and their papers often win prizes in parks, cities and provinces, and sometimes they are published in newspapers and periodicals. These teachers have formed their own professional expertise in practice, and they have an irreplaceable position inside and outside the park, so the pride of their work naturally arises. Only by forming professional expertise can we find our place in the competition and have a sense of accomplishment and superiority at work; Only in this way, the "bitterness" in work will truly become joy, and work will have a steady stream of internal motivation.
Be proficient in every aspect of your work.
Only when you are proficient in all aspects of your work can you feel competent and relaxed about your work, so that you won't get tired of it, and your work will become a real spiritual enjoyment, not a burden. Teachers who love preschool education, 100% think that they are qualified for preschool education, but some teachers who lack enthusiasm for preschool education feel that their work is a bit overwhelming and even feel that their work is very hard.
3. Take preschool education as a creative work.
Preschool education is a very complicated job. Because preschool teachers are always faced with differences and changes in educational objects, contents and situations, they must give full play to their creativity in order to do a good job. Only by taking preschool education as a creative work can this work be attractive and full of fun; On the contrary, if the day-to-day preschool education work is regarded as monotonous and mechanical repetition, and a lesson plan remains unchanged for several years or even longer, it will certainly make the work dull and lifeless, and even become simple manual labor.
Suhomlinski, a famous educator in the former Soviet Union, once said, "If you want your teaching work to bring some fun to teachers, so that attending classes every day will not become a boring obligation, then you should guide every teacher to embark on this happy road of educational research and creation." Carrying out educational research and creation can bring us a sense of accomplishment, fulfillment and satisfaction, and also make our educational work full of challenges and fun.
4, and more "positive pursuit of progress", "remarkable achievements" colleagues.
Communicating with "advanced elements" can not only improve their professional quality, but more importantly, they can often be infected by the healthy and positive attitude of "advanced elements" and constantly pursue their professional achievements, which is of course beneficial to teachers to form a positive and healthy professional psychology; On the contrary, if we often associate with "laggards" at work, over time, we will be infected by their negative attitude towards the world, and then enter a state of job burnout.
5. Strive to create a good interpersonal environment for work.
In kindergartens, a small number of preschool teachers don't like preschool education because the interpersonal relationship in the workplace is not satisfactory. Of course, some people don't want to leave their jobs in preschool education because they can't bear the harmonious relationship with their units. Good interpersonal relationship is of great positive significance to our work, our love for work and our mental health, and the creation of good interpersonal relationship depends on ourselves, such as communicating with colleagues and leaders, helping others, seeing the advantages of others, being more tolerant and accepting, and so on. This requires each kindergarten teacher to communicate by himself.