The purpose of my study was to understand the nature of teacher burnout, teacher self-
efficacy, and the relationship between the two. Central to this objective was to learn how three
New Hampshire middle school teachers experience burnout, and the meaning they make of their
experiences. In light of my aim to contextualize the experience of burnout, I framed this
dissertation as a case study (Yin 2014; Stake, 2006), and I chose Seidman’s three-part interview
structure to capture and represent three qualitative portraits of teachers experiencing burnout. By
investigating and presenting the experience of burnout qualitatively, it is my hope to contribute
to the educational psychology literature.
Research Design
According to Yin (2014), the purpose of using a case study as a research design is to
make a holistic, in-depth examination of a contemporary phenomenon situated within a real-life
context. The benefit of using case study over other research designs is for the researcher to
understand the behavioral conditions through the participant’s perspective (Zaidah, 2007). In the
context of this project, the case study seeks to answer the questions of how and why three NH
middle school teachers experience and understand burnout and its effect on their sense of teacher
self-efficacy. Case studies are by nature, bounded, in that they limit their exploration to a small
“complexity, and contextual embeddedness of individual events and phenomena” (Schram, 2006,
p. 107). The aim is to develop insight of the particular in order to gain knowledge of the issue
under exploration (Stake, 2006). Thus the objective of this inquiry is to gain a deeper
understanding of the way teachers construct meaning about their experiences of burnout and how
they feel, think, and explain their behavior based on their perceptions of their environment and
beliefs about their abilities to be successful.
Specifically, this project used a multicase study to investigate burnout and teacher self-
efficacy. Even though Stake (2006) suggests selecting four-ten cases for a multicase study, he
also acknowledges that some studies only use 2-3 cases “for good reason” (p. 22). According to
Stake (2006), “[a]n important reason for doing the multicase study is to examine how
the…phenomenon performs in different environments…When cases are selected carefully, the
design of a study can incorporate a diversity of contexts” (p. 23). I chose a middle school teacher
from each of the following contexts: rural, suburban, and urban settings, thus limiting my study
to three participants. My final product is not a cross-case analysis, but rather an in-depth
exploration of the characteristics of each case, highlighting the particular context of each and
how that setting influences the experiences of the phenomenon. The cases here, then, are each
participant’s individual experience of burnout, and each was studied to gain an understanding of
burnout as it was situated in its particular context (Stake, 2006). By comparing the constructs
within different contexts, my goal was to highlight similarities and differences in service of
Methods and Research Activity
The purpose of my study was to understand the nature of three middle school teachers’
experiences of burnout and teacher self-efficacy. The following questions guided my study:
• What meaning do three NH middle school teachers ascribe to their experiences of burnout and teacher self-efficacy?
• How are burnout and teacher self-efficacy manifested for these participants?
• How are burnout and teacher self-efficacy related for these participants?
The Interview Protocol
Seidman (2013) developed a three-part, in-depth interview protocol that was a good
method for my work. This method is a form of life history interviewing informed by assumptions
drawn from phenomenology (Seidman, 2013). As such, it uses open-ended questions in order for
participants to reflect on and make meaning about their experiences of the phenomenon under
study. The distinguishing feature of this interview procedure is that it requires the researcher to
conduct a series of three in-depth interviews with each participant. The first interview16 focuses
on the participant’s life history in order to contextualize her experience. Therefore in my first
interviews, I focused on asking teachers to reconstruct their lives up until they first experienced
burnout. I paid particular attention to the reasons they became teachers, their professional lives
up until they first experienced burnout, and any past experiences associated with stress, coping,
and teacher self-efficacy.
The second interview concentrates on the concrete details of the participant’s experience
of the phenomenon under study. This interview should avoid eliciting opinions and instead focus
on the myriad details of the experience. My second interviews focused on when the participants
first experienced burnout, the conditions around that experience, and their teacher self-efficacy
beliefs. In particular, I sought to uncover the relationship between the two constructs.
The final interview asks participants to reflect on the first and second interviews. The
intent is for the participant to “make meaning” by addressing the intellectual and emotional
connections between their work and life. It is this “combination of exploring the past to clarify
the events that led participants to where they are now, and describing the concrete details of their
present experience, [that] establishes conditions for reflecting upon what they’re now doing in
their lives” (Seidman, 2013, p. 22). Although the specific nature of the questions I asked were
contingent upon what each participant shared in the first two interviews, in general, the
overarching question in the final interview was: Given what you have reconstructed about your
early life and current teaching experiences, how do you currently understand the role of burnout
in your life?
Since the understanding of a phenomenon emerges from the participants’ experience (van
Manen, 1990), I deliberately employed open-ended questions. Moreover, as Seidman (2013)
notes, it is important when conducting in-depth interviews to ask follow-up questions for
clarification, to seek concrete details, or to request illustrative stories. As I listened to my
participants, I noted words I wanted them to define (ie: What does “stress” mean to you?), and
places where I wanted a concrete example. In addition, I had a research agenda: to try to
understand burnout from their perspectives. Therefore I brought a concrete list of questions with
me to guide the interviews, particularly for the second interview in which the purpose is to seek
out particular details about burnout and teacher self-efficacy. However, I found the interviews to
Finding and Selecting Participants
The main criterion for my study was that participants are currently reporting symptoms of
burnout. In order to identify possible participants, I used self-reported measures of burnout as
collected by the University of New Hampshire’s Teacher Longitudinal Survey. This project
collects information using a variety of measures, including the Maslach Burnout Inventory
(MBI). Although various researchers have developed other instruments for measuring burnout,
the MBI for educators remains the strongest psychometric instrument in the field today
(Maslach, Shaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). This instrument measures teacher burnout through three
subscales: Emotional Exhaustion (nine items), Depersonalization (five items), and Personal
Accomplishment (eight items). The use of this instrument allowed me to identify NH teachers
who are experiencing burnout.
The Teacher Longitudinal Survey also collects demographic information. Embedded in
the survey was a box for informants to check if they were interested in a possible follow-up
conversation regarding burnout. I emailed this survey out to almost every school in New
Hampshire serving 6th-8th grades. As a result of the survey, I received over 30 emails from
willing NH middle school teachers. Initially I confirmed their burnout status from the results of
their survey. Then I pre-screened each positive respondent to ensure that I was selecting only
experienced middle school teachers from a variety of teaching contexts: rural, suburban, and
urban settings.
I chose these inclusion criteria for three reasons. First, many consider middle school the
most difficult level to teach due to the combination of student-teacher interactions, adolescence,
and proliferation of standardized testing (Sparks, 2011; Meyer, 2011; Gootman, 2007).
only one quantitative study specifically investigated middle school teachers’ experiences of
burnout compared to elementary and high school teachers (Martin, Sass, & Schmitt, 2012). They
found that middle school teachers experience greater levels of depersonalization and lower levels
of teacher self-efficacy than elementary teachers. Due to the relative dearth of studies focusing
on middle school teachers’ experiences of burnout, and the understanding that teaching middle
school is stressful, I believe this study is timely.
Second, since workplace variables strongly influence a teacher’s perception of burnout
(Maslach et al., 2001; Friedman, 1995; Leiter, 1991), I believe that teachers working in different
settings will face different pressures in their work environments. I felt it was important to
interview teachers from a variety of teaching contexts in order to examine the commonalities and
differences of the burnout experience across three diverse teaching sites (Stake, 2006). The result
of this work was a multiple case study report. As Stake (2006) notes, an important reason for
doing a multicase study is to examine how the phenomenon performs in different environments,
which will help reveal similarities and differences of the phenomenon across sites. Thus, the
purpose here was to give depth to our understanding of burnout by examining it in multiple
contexts.
My final criterion was that all of my participants had been teaching in New Hampshire
for many years. As the research notes, burnout is a common experience for new teachers, and it
has been suggested as a reason that many leave the profession (Brown & Wynn, 2009; Ingersoll,
2001). But the purpose of this investigation is to explore the professional life histories of burned
out teachers who remain in the classroom. Therefore, longevity was important for this study.
Once I narrowed down my respondents by excluding all teachers with less than five years
emails, one per demographic. I received an immediate response from my rural and urban
participants. However, it took two more rounds of emails to locate a willing suburban
participant. At the end of the process, Jason, Susan, and Sean agreed to meet with me for three-
90 minute interviews each over the course of late spring-early summer. Interesting to note, all
three are white and married, while only Jason and Sean have children.
TABLE 1: Participant Characteristics
NAME SETTING GRADE and