Burnout no ensino superior: um estudo exploratório

Abstract

This article focuses on burnout in higher education, understood as a phenomenon consisting of the dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and lack of personal fulfilment. It analyses separately the burnout associated with teaching and research activities, relating its development to antecedent and consequent variables such as gender, contractual relationship, perceived pressure, the imbalance between effort and reward, satisfaction, performance, work-family conflict, and career abandonment. Based on a survey applied to Portuguese higher education teachers, it highlights that burnout is not an individual problem, but originates from the organizational conditions of the exercise of professional activity, showing a relationship between the satisfaction intrinsic to the teaching career and the low willingness to leave, besides the effects on the intensification of work-family conflict. It concludes on the relevance of assessing the diversity of activities underlying the teaching career in higher education and the stressful factors faced by professionals, as well as their effects on work performance, health, and quality of life.