Recognizing and Addressing Educator Burnout

Since COVID, the term burnout has crept into everyday language with people reporting burnout in every aspect of their lives. In actual terms, burnout is a condition caused by chronic interpersonal stressors from our job and is characterized by three dimensions: 

• Overwhelming exhaustion,  
• Feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and  
• A sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment (Maslach & Leiter, 2017). 

Educators are widely-understood to have higher than average levels of burnout, second only to the healthcare sector.  Nonetheless, school districts are always shocked with the high levels of reported burnout in their Guarding Minds at Work survey report.

​​ (Mental Health Research Canada, 2023)​

Based on Well at Work’s 2023-24 benchmark, 92% of school division employees and 98% of teachers report having significant or serious concerns around the question, I feel burned out in my job (Well at Work, 2025). While an employee’s response on the survey does not necessarily signify a clinical diagnosis of burnout, it is an indication of the level of stress and strain they are feeling. 

The Guarding Minds benchmark results are consistent with findings of a 2020 study of compassion fatigue, burnout and emotional labour in Alberta education workers, where 90% of respondents indicated at least one category of burnout (Kendrick, 2022). 

Causes of Burnout 

Burnout is the consequence of chronic workplace stress. Teachers and other educators describe the toll it takes to respond to increasing needs of students, staff vacancies and absences, and the never-ending stream of new initiatives. Research has identified that leading drivers of burnout include excessive workload, imbalance between job demands and skills, a lack of job control, role ambiguity, role conflict and prolonged work stress. (Yildirim & Dinc, 2019; Riley, 2019; Federici & Skaalvik, 2012; De Simone et al., 2021). 

In their chapter, Understanding Burnout, in The Handbook of Stress and Health, Maslach and Leiter discuss the individual and situational predictors of burnout, noting that the findings on personal variables is far less significant than for the situational factors. This suggests that burnout is more related to social/ organizational factors than personal ones. They described six interrelated situational areas that are predictors of burnout: workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values, with workload and control having critical roles.

Workload: When employees have too much to do with too few resources. The issue is more acute when people don’t have time to recover from one set of demands before another occurs.

Control: Conflicting demands or values. Inability to influence decisions that affect one’s work.

Reward: When compensation, recognition, and/or job satisfaction are not consistent with expectations.

Community: The quality of social interaction at work, including conflict, mutual support, closeness, and the capacity to work as a team.

Fairness: The extent to which decisions at work are perceived as being fair and equitable. The fairness of the process is viewed as more important than the favourability of the outcome.

Values: A gap between organizational values and personal values. For example, the tension between providing high-quality student support and managing costs can leave employees feeling that they have to make a trade-off between the work they want to do and the work they have to do. (Maslach & Leiter, 2017).

Consequences of Burnout 

For those experiencing burnout, the impact can be significant and wide-reaching as shown in the table below. However, the impact goes beyond the individual experiencing it. There is some evidence that students being taught by a teacher suffering from burnout tend to perform worse on exams, receive lower cumulative grades and have lower quality motivation than those taught by teachers not experiencing burnout. (Madigan & Kim, 2021). For colleagues and school/district administrators, it can mean increased workloads and disruptions resulting from increased employee absences and lower engagement. 

Individual Impact of Burnout

(Salvagioni et al., 2017; Yildirim & Dinc, 2019; Beausaert et al 2016; Maxwell & Riley, 2017; Kendrick, 2022).

Strategies to Prevent Burnout

While there is a significant amount of research on the levels and causes of burnout, the evidence regarding effective strategies to address burnout is limited. Although burnout is the result of both personal and situational factors, research has often focused on individual interventions. Recommended individual strategies largely focus on building resilience, often through mindfulness practices, yoga or cognitive behaviour therapy. While these practices and programs have been widely studied in school settings and have proven beneficial for some, the evidence regarding their broad scalability and lasting impact is limited.

To date, only a few studies have examined organizational strategies to prevent burnout. These studies, primarily focused on the healthcare sector, suggest that organizational interventions hold promise for attenuating burnout. In a meta-analysis of burnout prevention strategies for physcians, De Simone et al (2021) concluded that organization-directed interventions (e.g. workload, schedules, teamwork, communication) were more likely to lead to reduction in burnout than individually-directed interventions (e.g. stress reduction, self-care, mindfulness). In a 2016 study of physicians and burnout, Kumar stated that the focus on building individual resilience as a preventive strategy against burnout can distract attention from the work environment and organizational culture that cause burnout. He said that measures to prevent burnout will not be effective unless attention is paid to enhancing a positive work environment .

Researchers often view burnout as an imbalance – the demands of the job exceed the skills and resources you have to do the work. This view is reflected The Job Demands-Resource (JD-R) model.

Figure 1. Job Demand-Resource Model

This model can be helpful as we consider strategies to decrease employee stress and prevent burnout. We can see that we need to decrease job demands or increase job resources to correct the imbalance. As the second visual shows, organizational strategies such as streamlining processes and workloads, making deadlines more reasonable and increasing collaboration and social supports can contribute to reducing burnout levels.

Mitigating burnout in the education sector is a growing priority. Strategies to prevent and attenuate burnout can enhance student outcomes and support the recruitment and retention of employees. However, burnout is a complex occupational phenomenon resulting from both personal and organizational factors. Like many complex challenges, addressing burnout is a shared responsibility. The current research suggests that while individual interventions can support employee resilience and help them cope with the demands of their work, individual efforts are insufficient. The most effective strategies for reducing burnout combine individual interventions with organizational strategies, such as managing workloads and attending to organizational cultures.

Bibliography

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Beausaert, S., Froehlich, D. E., Devos, C., & Riley, P. (2016). Effects of Support on Stress and Burnout in School Principals. Educational Research, 58(4), 347–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2016.1220810

De Simone, S., Vargas, M., & Servillo, G. (2021). Organizational strategies to reduce physician burnout: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 33(4), 883–894. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-019-01368-3

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Kendrick, A. (2022). Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and the Emotional Labor of Educational Workers—ProQuest. The International Journal of Health, Wellness and Society, 13(1), 31–55. https://doi.org/10.18848/2156-8960/CGP/v13i01/31-55

Kumar, S. (2016). Burnout and Doctors: Prevalence, Prevention and Intervention. Healthcare, 4(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare4030037

Madigan, D. J., & Kim, L. E. (2021). Does teacher burnout affect students? A systematic review of its association with academic achievement and student-reported outcomes. International Journal of Educational Research, 105, 101714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101714

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Maxwell, A., & Riley, P. (2017). Emotional Demands, Emotional Labour and Occupational Outcomes in School Principals: Modelling the Relationships. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 45(3), 484–502. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143215607878

Mental Health Research Canada. (2023). Burnout Among Educators and Health-Care Workers in Canada: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. Mental Health Research Canada. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f31a311d93d0f2e28aaf04a/t/645d2522146bf1302c7eb54b/1683825954598/High+Burn+Out+Sectors+Qualitative+Report+%281%29.pdf

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Salvagioni, D. A. J., Melanda, F. N., Mesas, A. E., González, A. D., Gabani, F. L., & Andrade, S. M. de. (2017). Physical, psychological and occupational consequences of job burnout: A systematic review of prospective studies. PLOS ONE, 12(10), e0185781. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185781

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Well at Work 2023-24 benchmark reflect the responses of 7748 employees from 13 Canadian school districts and school divisions. All data was collected between Feb 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2024.

Yildirim, F., & Dinc, M. S. (2019). Factors influencing burnout of the principals: A pilot study in Flemish schools of Belgium. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 32(1), 3538–3553. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2019.1660200