Teaching with hope : the lived experience of educators’ burnout when working in state schools’ learning support centres

Abstract

The study explored the lived experience of burnout in educators working in state school Learning Support Centres (LSC) and implications for counselling. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) using audio-recorded, individual, semi-structured interviews was employed with a purposive sample of five participants. The findings evidence diverse reasons for burnout, including the ambiguity of roles, lack of training, and learners’ volatile behaviours, resulting in emotional conflict as commonplace. Participants struggled with different emotions brought on by daily situations. They found support from management and colleagues within the LSC and less from the Department of Education, where the lack of presence of the College’s psychosocial team affected. Educators relied on their knowledge using reward strategies and curriculum adaptation and training. Curriculum adaptation proved more complex than mainstream schools, and the rewards became ineffective, attributing to burnout. Training provided was not seen as relevant to LSCs, so they sought training on mental health outside school. Moving to LSCs led participants to start changing both through their profession and because of their experience. They began approaching situations and working differently. Self-care was given priority, and they focused on their personal life, compartmentalised problems, communicated with colleagues, and used restorative practices with learners and staff. They considered counselling as a restorative practice where it can be used for supervision and intervention, providing educators with useful resources. Recommendations for further research include how LSC management can address burnout and how counsellors perceive counselling the educators and the students. More relevant training on restorative practices allows counsellors to teach educators and more counselling sessions with learners were considered important. The policies recommended include regular counselling sessions in LSCs and frequent contact with psychosocial teams and LSCs. As an insider research, this work embraces reflexivity.