The Causes of Burnout among Iranian EFL Academics: A Case Study

Workplace stress among employees has been known to impede work efficacy, a phenomenon usually referred to as burnout. Recently, there has been a growing research on this issue in educational contexts, particularly at pre-tertiary levels, giving rise to a need to do this kind of investigation at higher education level as well. As a response to this need, the present paper is a report of a case study aimed at examining the causes of burnout experienced by two Iranian EFL academics. The results of the thematic analysis of the interviews with the participants indicated five main conceptual categories associated with the subjects’ burnout experiences: Institutional demands, interpersonal problems, discordant outlooks, lack of student motivation, and lack of institutional supports. The discussion on each of these categories shed light on how these categories may contribute, in varying degrees of course, to the burnout among academics.