BURNOUT AND PROFESSIONAL WELL-BEING OF SCHOOL ENGLISH-AS-A-FOREIGN-LANGUAGE TEACHERS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

Burnout is one of the actual mental health issues of the contemporary world. It is an occupational syndrome that affects socio-emotional, personal, and professional tenets of the life and undermines one’s well-being, leading to certain consequences in a workplace. This study employs a systematic review to comprehensively examine diverse aspects of international school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ professional well-being and burnout. The main purpose of this systematic review is to make a comprehensive overview of the data on the influence of burnout on EFL teachers’ well-being and coping strategies. The research questions aim to explain the relatedness between EFL teachers’ well-being and burnout, specific contextual predictors, and coping mechanisms. This review employed the four main inclusion criteria: types of study, the time range, the target population, and the educational context. The exclusion criteria were non-originality, lack of peer-review, non-English publication, restricted access, irrelevant context, and mixed educational levels, settings, and population. Science Direct, Web of Science, and the website of the Nazarbayev University Library were used as main data sources. No registers were used to identify studies. The data search was done in February, 2025. To minimize the risk of bias in the included studies, the MMAT tool was employed, and the report was done based on the PRISMA framework and thematic analysis. The PRISMA diagram was used to present the search results. In total, 16 studies with quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, and secondary research-based designs were included in this review, with a total number of 4, 295 participants. Key findings indicate that burnout is the result of dynamic interplay of various factors and closely related to EFL teachers’ well-being, whereas diverse coping mechanisms and internal resources can mitigate it. This review is essential for enhancing the quality of studies on burnout in Kazakhstan