Part 2: Diving deeper into burnout, a serious threat for educators
Every day, every term, every year, teachers, and school leaders walk a fine line between ‘being ok’ and ‘being close to burnout’. Burnout is a difficult issue at the best of times, and it isn’t going away.
While many education challenges are complex, and there are no simple solutions to address them, there are things individuals can do that make a difference. This article looks at what causes burnout, and what steps we can take to reduce and prevent it.
What is burnout?
Burnout is both related to and different from stress, exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed. Our understanding of it has developed over time. In the 1980s, burnout was described as a ‘depletion of energies’ in response to overwhelming demands and high ideals in caregiving professions.
Increasingly, burnout is now understood as an occupational phenomenon, meaning that discussions of burnout should focus on working conditions, not only on an individual’s response to those conditions. This change has been valuable, because it relieves individuals from feeling they have to find ways to cope better or become more resilient on their own.
Research identifies three main components to burnout:
Feelings of exhaustion and depletion, leading to
Detachment, or feelings of negativity or cynicism about one's job, leading to
Reduced performance or professional effectiveness.
Burnout doesn’t happen overnight. It accumulates. We can see the beginnings of burnout in stress and exhaustion and a sense of being overwhelmed, feelings that become chronic and prolonged without proper attention.
Diving deeper into these three dimensions
Let’s look more deeply at what a person might experience across these dimensions, so that we can identify these symptoms, both in ourselves and in our colleagues. Knowledge and insight are powerful tools that help us to gain clarity and understanding, and to accurately observe and identify feelings and thoughts in ourselves and others. They are critical to professional conversations and open communication of difficult challenges; they help us to provide support and care.
1 – Feeling mental, physical and emotional exhaustion. When we’re under pressure, feelings of extreme tiredness and exhaustion are often the first things we notice. We might feel frustrated and irritable. Our moods might swing, our concentration flag. We might experience chronic fatigue and insomnia, as well as increased illness, poor digestion, headaches and dizziness. We might feel drained, feeling boredom or dread about new projects at work, or lacking energy or interest to do other things, like hobbies or seeing friends, after work.
2 – Feeling negative or cynical about work. These feelings develop over time. While we can all have bad days, and dislike certain tasks or parts of our work, persistent feelings of negativity and cynicism point to a change in attitude or relationship to our work. Work is no longer a source of satisfaction, meaning and purpose but of irritation and frustration. Cynicism is a way of enacting an increasing distance from work, students and colleagues, a lack of interest or joy in things that used to be compelling and rewarding.
3 – Feeling ineffective, that your work no longer matters or makes a difference. A decline in energy and a rise in cynicism or detachment makes a person less effective and productive, more easily overwhelmed and irritated or frustrated at everyday tasks. Work that once brought satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment and contribution to a greater cause now brings a feeling that we are accomplishing nothing, that our efforts are meaningless.
Burnout doesn’t happen overnight – it is cumulative
The state of burnout, therefore, is the outcome of all these feelings. Today, various burnout checklists and tools are available, and researchers have looked specifically at burnout in education.
However, while it is important to understand the symptoms of burnout, in order to recognise and identify feelings and thoughts that need to be properly addressed and managed, it is also important to understand how the nature of work contributes to burnout. While there are no quick fixes, it is still important to identify causes of burnout, even if they lie beyond what we are able to completely change and control.
Burnout is about work: Work design and workload
High workloads and feeling unable to get everything done and get on top of things are part of burnout, but not the whole story. Burnout is about work, not just overwork.
Various aspects of work design, the workplace and working conditions can underpin burnout. These include:
Excessive workloads or work pace, understaffing;
Unsafe or poor physical working conditions;
Organisational culture that drives negative behaviour;
Under- or over-promotion;
Job insecurity, inadequate pay, or poor investment in career development; and
Conflicting home/work demands.
The World Health Organisation defines these factors as psychosocial risks and they are important to consider when we are thinking about how to respond to burnout. Our goal is to create a healthy and sustainable workforce. Burnout is not a personal issue; it is a work issue, and we are all responsible for fixing it.
Ways to address burnout need to come from
individual teachers and leaders being informed and aware about what to look out for, and what symptoms can look and feel like
leaders (at school and system level) thinking about how to design work and support the workforce to reduce burnout.
It’s important to be open about levels of burnout
Report after report tells us that burnout is at unacceptably high levels. Teachers and school leaders alike are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, and reporting of burnout is increasing. Burnout poses a huge threat to even more significant mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and self-harm.
Our insight-to-action series on self-care looks at a number of things teachers and leaders can do to reduce and prevent stress and burnout in themselves and in their colleagues. It’s a work issue and a leadership issue. Let’s get better at talking about it, sharing knowledge and insight about stress, exhaustion and burnout. And let’s focus on practical strategies to reduce them as part of our everyday work.
References and resources
Dicke, T. (2026). The Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety, and Wellbeing Survey: 15 YEARS OF DATA. Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/666032c06b6f9c6fdba32972/t/69b22efc59560b12fb1d7c80/1773285116257/Australian+Principal+Occupational+Health+Safety+and+Wellbeing+Survey+Annual+Report+2025.pdf
Freudenberger, H. J. (1986). The Issues of Staff Burnout in Therapeutic Communities. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 18(3), 247–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.1986.10472354
Oberg, G. (2026). Moral injury in teaching: the systemic roots of ethical conflict and emotional burnout in education. Educational Review, 78(3), 346–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2025.2504523
Parker, G., Tavella, G., and Eyers, K. (2021). Burnout: A guide to identifying burnout and pathways to recovery. NSW, Australia; Allen & Unwin.
World Health Organization – definition of burnout: https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases
World Health Organization – Mental Health Fact Sheets – https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work
Burnout tests
Beyond blue: Burnout Check-in Tool - Beyond Blue
Psychology today Burnout at Work Test / Quiz | Psychology Today