Teachers' burnout: The impact of live online meetings

Burnout is a problem that modern individuals frequently encounter and that profoundly affects many areas of life. The Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted this issue and made remote working mandatory in many sectors. Particularly in the education sector, teachers conducted their classes online during the pandemic. Besides the feeling of burnout, this situation has affected the effectiveness of education and teachers' psychology. This thesis deeply examines the burnout experiences of teachers due to online meetings and classes through qualitative interviews. The research was conducted with 37 teachers in public schools in Balıkesir using a purposive sampling method and a grounded theory approach. As a result, it has been found that burnout caused by online meetings is a multidimensional and complex phenomenon for teachers. In the current model, teachers face challenges such as the transformation of the home into a workplace, communication and interaction difficulties, cognitive load, and a constant sense of being monitored. Additionally, physical and mental fatigue, inequality of opportunity and access issues, deficiencies in teacher training and preparation, teacher-parent relationships, communication and collaboration issues among colleagues, and concerns about the efficiency of online meetings also lower teachers' motivation and increase their sense of burnout. This negatively impacts both teachers and students, leading to a decline in educational quality. At this point, based on the findings of this thesis, it is recommended that educational institutions and administrators develop strategies to assist teachers in adapting to the new educational model and implement practices that alleviate the challenges of online education.