COVID-19 and Teacher Burnout: Findings from a Qualitative Study

Introduction and Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of COVID-19 on teacher burnout. The study identifies the COVID-19 global pandemic as an example of an environmental factor that contributes to or influences teacher burnout. This research was conducted on the grounds that teacher well-being remains one of the most critical issues in the United States educational sector. Teacher well-being has gained increased attention in the U.S. because of growing diversity and mounting demands across schools and classrooms. Moreover, given the nature of their work, teachers are predisposed to a series of stressors including lack of emotional support, student discipline problems, and poor working conditions (Ross, Romer, & Horner, 2012). To achieve the purpose of the study, four individual teachers were included in the survey. These participants provided significant insights into teacher burnout, the environmental factors contributing to it, and the impact of COVID-19 on teacher burnout.

Study Results and Emerging Themes

A total of four teachers participated in this qualitative survey. The surveyed teachers work at the kindergarten, middle school, high school, and higher education levels. The study participants come from diverse racial backgrounds and have between 5 and more than 20 years of experience in a teaching role. Their extensive experience made them ideal participants, as they provided rich data relating to the issue under investigation. Teachers from these different school levels were selected so that the researcher could gain a wider perspective on the phenomenon.

Data obtained from participants was analyzed using thematic analysis, a qualitative data analysis technique that identifies themes and patterns within a dataset. The emerging themes and patterns are then used to answer the research questions and achieve the purpose of the study. This analysis revealed four major themes relating to the phenomenon under investigation.

One of the emerging themes from the dataset is the view that teacher burnout is multifaceted in nature. Study participants contend that teacher burnout incorporates different dimensions depending on the experience of the individual, and they offered varied understandings of the concept based on their own teaching experiences. They described teacher burnout as incorporating physical, psychological, and emotional aspects. Participant #2 and Participant #4 defined teacher burnout as mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion brought about by work and affecting one's personal life. Participant #2 stated that burnout "means mentally and physically a person's life is impacted by work and they need to make a change." Participant #4 agreed, stating, "Burnout means that you are physically, mentally, and emotionally drained. It encompasses the idea of being in a state of constant exhaustion because you are overworked and always feel swamped." As evident in their statements, the physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion are a direct result of work.

While Participant #1 and Participant #3 did not use the terms physical, mental, or emotional exhaustion explicitly, they nonetheless illustrated the multifaceted nature of teacher burnout. Participant #3 described it as "someone no longer having the energy, passion, or commitment to do their job effectively." Despite not having personally experienced teacher burnout, Participant #3 believes that a lack of energy, devotion, and passion for carrying out job responsibilities effectively can be an indicator of burnout. Participant #1 demonstrated the multifaceted nature of teacher burnout by prioritizing several distinct dimensions, stating that it incorporates "lack of consistency in teaching, lack of appreciation, repetitiveness, lack of support from the school community, systematic and structural issues, and conflict and staff inconsistency."

Participants #1, #2, and #4 described teacher burnout based on their individual experiences, and their characterization of it as a multifaceted concept was shaped by their time in the profession. Participant #3, by contrast, defined the concept based on observation and reflection rather than personal experience. He reported not experiencing burnout himself but believed it encompasses exhaustion across multiple domains of an individual's well-being.

Despite acknowledging the multifaceted nature of burnout, Participant #2 does not believe that safety is one of its dimensions. When asked whether teacher burnout is related to issues of safety, Participant #2 stated, "I am going to overly say no — I am a fairly large male, so I think that helps play into me not feeling unsafe."

All participants reported that burnout affected their workload and forced them to make changes to their work. While three of them experienced an increased workload due to burnout, the remaining participant did not change his total workload but instead changed the type and level of courses taught. Participant #1 stated, "As teachers have been leaving the profession this year I find myself having to supplement for their jobs and help to rectify conflicts that students have with substitutes or themselves. I have had to rewrite a 6th-grade curriculum that I have never taught before." In agreement, Participant #2 confirmed that burnout had affected his workload. Participant #4 reported that burnout "has negatively impacted my workload," leaving him feeling unable to complete assigned tasks at an adequate level. He described struggling with an increased workload: "I am not completing IEPs at the level of accuracy and proficiency I want to be completing them at. I also feel that my DL students are not receiving the best modifications on their handouts and assignments because I feel so overwhelmed by other responsibilities. I feel that I am being stretched so thin that I can only complete the tasks assigned to me at 50% accuracy."

Participant #4 further illustrated his increased workload by noting that "the combination of IEP season coupled with the biology situation has increased my workload significantly." The switch to online teaching did not ease his burden, as he experienced frustrations trying to "get students to engage in rigorous critical thinking skills for reasonable periods of time like 20 to 30 minutes."

By contrast, Participant #3 stated that burnout prompted him to reduce his workload. He explained: "I stopped teaching remedial reading and writing and moved to entirely college-level courses." His decision to reduce workload was also influenced by personal factors, including responsibilities as a single foster parent caring for a toddler.

Levels of burnout among teachers are affected by personal factors as well as conditions in their home and school environments. These factors can serve as causes of burnout, influence its severity, and shape the prevention or response strategies an individual teacher adopts. For Participant #3, personal and home environment factors shaped the strategies he used to prevent burnout. He shifted to teaching entirely college-level courses and stopped teaching remedial reading and writing while managing challenges at home. He explained, "I was dealing with toddler and preschool behaviors as a single parent at home, and I found I no longer had the patience or desire to deal with behavior and executive functioning issues at work as well."

All four participants identified the nature of the school environment as a major factor contributing to burnout. They reported a lack of support from the school and district as a primary cause of their burnout experiences. Participant #1 reported receiving support only from "peers I am close with," rather than from institutional sources. Participant #2 stated that the school and district focus on hiring more teachers "but salvaging teachers and taking care of those who are already here does not seem a priority." When asked whether adequate support existed to address burnout at the school and district level, Participant #3 simply replied, "No." He elaborated that administration appeared to believe that laying out a teaching plan was sufficient to help teachers manage burnout — a perception that demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding, and one that led Participant #3 to think "this is going to be my last time teaching." In agreement, Participant #4 noted that "unit plans are a big ask and have been a cause for burnout for many teachers at the school."

Participant #4 elaborated: "I do not feel there is support in place at the school and especially at the district level to address teacher burnout. I believe that the school speaks highly of ensuring that teachers have SEL specifically geared toward teachers; however, I think it is spoken about but not respected or implemented." While his school emphasized the importance of teachers taking time away from their jobs, it did not uphold these commitments in practice. Participant #4 suggested that meaningful support would involve "admin check-ins or coaching," and added that more differentiated scaffolding for new teachers versus veterans was needed. He also noted that while the school had a designated mentor teacher and an instructional coach, more active involvement from those positions would have helped: "It would have been incredibly beneficial to have those two positions come and assist and work with the biology sub to help her understand the curriculum and answer basic questions about how our school functions," adding, "This would have taken a lot of pressure off of me."

Participant #1 and Participant #3 reported that COVID-19 significantly impacted their teaching experiences, primarily through the emergence of digital learning. Students experienced high academic fatigue, as the digital format made it difficult to sustain direct instruction. Participant #1 said, "I have seen students' lack of writing ability and cognitive focus extremely decline because of the use of a digital platform. There is also high academic fatigue where the students have a difficult time sustaining direct instruction." Participant #2 reported feeling so strained by the digital learning format that he "strongly considered early retirement or a career change if I had to remain on Zoom, and began pursuing an alternate certification in another field." This was compounded by the fact that the online format worsened an existing autoimmune disorder.

Participant #2 and Participant #4 had notably different experiences regarding COVID-19's impact on teaching and burnout. For Participant #2, COVID-19 generated positive teaching experiences through digital learning, which he believed created a low behavioral intervention setting. He stated, "It has taught me the joy of teaching in a low behavioral intervention setting. My remote learning classes accomplished more than previous years because behavior was easier to manage." Participant #4, on the other hand, reported that COVID-19 had little impact on his day-to-day teaching because learning remained largely in person, as many people in his state and school ignored health protocols. He noted, "COVID protocols were very much ignored and did not really ever affect my experience as a teacher." Participant #3 observed that his school had been well prepared because it was already operating as a one-to-one technology school before the pandemic, with platforms such as Schoology already in use and each student already equipped with a Chromebook.

Participants also reported varied levels of preparedness for handling COVID-19's implications for teaching and student learning. Participant #1 indicated that his technology skills had prepared him adequately. Participant #2 and Participant #4, however, disagreed, stating that they were not prepared. Participant #2 said, "Not prepared at all. Everything was fly by night, so to speak." Participant #3 reflected, "Everything would have been fine with me if the physical experience of teaching online wasn't so painful."

Discussion of Key Findings

This study has provided significant insights into teacher burnout, its environmental factors, and how COVID-19 affected it. As evident in the findings, teacher burnout refers to the physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion brought about by work. This definition is consistent with existing literature, which identifies three dimensions of teacher burnout: physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and cognitive weariness (Shirom & Melamed, 2006; Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1997; Chang, 2009). These three dimensions form the basis on which burnout affects teachers' effectiveness in their roles and their contribution to student learning. As this study shows, physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion are both caused by and reflected in teacher workload. Burnout is essentially a result of being overwhelmed by work, and it in turn forces teachers to either increase or reduce their workloads. Study findings therefore indicate a strong link between teacher burnout and workload.

Study findings indicate that teacher burnout is associated with a range of environmental factors including administrative issues, lack of peer support, poor teaching conditions, family problems, and workload. Environmental stressors such as school policies, working conditions, and on-the-job demands have been identified in the literature as contributing to teacher burnout (Graber, 2018). In this study, these stressors manifested as structural issues within the learning environment. Several participants felt under-supported by peers and leaders and struggled with instructional demands such as increased workload (Buchanan, 2012). In addition, personal stressors — those originating from teachers' lives outside school — also contributed to burnout, with family challenges and home responsibilities emerging as significant personal factors. Teacher burnout is thus brought about by a complex interplay of personal and environmental influences.

Regarding the impact of COVID-19, the study found that the pandemic's primary effect was the transition to online teaching and instruction. For most participants, the COVID-19 experience was essentially synonymous with moving to online classrooms. However, the study produced mixed results regarding whether teachers and schools were adequately prepared for this transition. Some teachers reported that pre-existing technology skills and established online learning platforms enhanced their preparedness, a finding that contradicts Flaherty (2020), who argues that educators had little to no adequate training for the abrupt and unexpected transition. Other participants confirmed that the transition was indeed sudden and unexpected, aligning with Flaherty's (2020) position.

With regard to the direct effect of COVID-19 on burnout specifically, the study could not establish a clear link. Participants did not explicitly describe how the pandemic affected their burnout levels. Some reported positive teaching experiences as a result of transitioning online — noting reduced behavioral issues and increased productivity — while others described worsening health conditions and increased stress. Notably, study participants did not specifically address how COVID-19 affected their burnout. They focused primarily on its effects on broader teaching practice and experience. These findings neither fully support nor contradict existing literature, which suggests the pandemic increased workload and uncertainty among teachers, thereby heightening their vulnerability to burnout (Zadok-Gurman et al., 2021).