Browsing by Subject "karnevalismi"

The purpose of this thesis is to chart teachers' experiences concerning job burnout and the role of social support in gaining well-being at work. The theoretical base of this study is in Maslach's, Schaufeli's and Leiter's (2001) research on job burnout and in House's (1981) and Cohen's and Wills's (1985) research on social support. Burnout of teachers appears to be a special phenomenon compared to other occupations, which is due to the nature of the teachers' job. My research questions are as follows: 1. How does job burnout appear on teachers' speech and stories? 2. How does social support appear in teachers' work in relation to job burnout and what kind of forms of social support have they experienced and would like to experience? 3. How are teachers' stories and their collective memory about job burnout and social support reflected in the data? I collected the data through a narrative interview in a focus group. The group consisted of seven teachers. I analysed the data through content analysis and narrative analysis. The teachers described their experiences of job-related rush and burnout. They felt that their burnout was increased by the lack of superior support and by role conflicts. In contrast, the support from their superior and their peers helped them to gain well-being at their work. In the narrative analysis, it appeared that their experiences of burnout were collective and their stories about job burnout were based on collective memory. Social support appears to be carnivalistic according to Bakhtin (1979). In the carnival, people can free themselves from society's norms and the boundaries between the roles are blurred. As a conclusion, I can state that job burnout is a common problem among teachers and social support helps them to gain well-being at their work. For teachers, it is important that there is support at hand. It would be important to intervene at an early stage of job burnout before it becomes severe.