Academic burnout among high-school students in Kazakhstan: The protective role of personality and academic motivation.

Abstract

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between Big Five Personality Factors, academic motivation elements and academic burnout of high-school students at NIS, Taraz. Additionally, the relationship between academic burnout and certain student background factors (gender, grade, profile subject, relationship with parents), together with school-related factors (teacher support, teacher attitude, school support, class atmosphere) was examined. Academic burnout manifests itself through feeling of emotional exhaustion, cynicism towards studying and feeling of inadequacy as a student. The study used a non-experimental explanatory cross-sectional survey design. The research site for the study was Nazarbayev Intellectual School of Taraz, Kazakhstan. The participants were selected using non-probabilistic convenience sampling procedure. The sample comprised 113 NIS students of 10th and 11th grades. Data was collected using School Burnout Inventory (SBI), Big Five Inventory (BFI), Academic Motivation Scale (AMS), and Academic Burnout Factors Questionnaire (ABFQ). Data was analyzed using descriptive (mean, standard deviation), inferential (t-test, ANOVA) and bivariate (correlation, regression) analyses. The results of the study showed that the overall level of academic burnout among NIS high-school students is considered average. Furthermore, neuroticism was found to be a significant predictor of academic burnout in school. Intrinsic motivation oriented on accomplishment had a modest negative effect on academic burnout. Considering school-related factors, teacher support and school support were negatively related to academic burnout. Among student background factors, female students’ burnout level was higher than of male students, tenth grade students had a lower academic burnout that eleventh grade, and natural sciences students experienced higher level of academic burnout than students majoring in technical sciences.