Juggling coursework, student teaching, and personal lives: BGSU pre-service teachers’ experiences and pre-conceptions on teacher burnout

Teacher burnout is a hot topic in today's media, as teachers' responsibilities expand and retention rates in the education field falter. While this is a desperate issue, the specific topic of this study is pre-service teachers' experiences of and ideas about the three dimensions of burnout. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), these dimensions are: "feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy." Participants involved in this study completed a survey involving seven multiple-choice questions aligned with the dimensions of burnout previously identified; participants also answered two short-answer questions that ask whether they noticed past teachers experience burnout and whether they believe teachers' professional and personal identities should be kept separate. This study addresses the lack in literature about pre-service teachers' experiences of burnout regarding their student teaching internship.