Age-Related Differences in Academic Burnout of Korean Adolescents

Abstract

Korean adolescents experience considerable stress because of an educational system that focuses primarily on college entrance examinations, pressure for academic achievement, and a competitive atmosphere in school. The main purpose of this study was to explore age differences in the construct of Korean adolescents’ academic burnout. Once assumptions of configural, factor loading, and intercept invariance were satisfied, we compared means of latent variables (four components of academic burnout in the present study). Results of the latent mean analysis showed that all four subscales (exhaustion, antipathy, cynicism, and inefficacy) of academic burnout increased gradually as age increased. Moving from elementary to middle and middle to high school appears to be stressful for students. Implications for school professionals and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Longitudinal Analysis of Academic Burnout in Korean Middle School Students

“…inefficacy, cynicism, antipathy and exhaustion) in order to assess academic burnout of Korean students. Following the results of Lee's () study, we hypothesized that academic burnout would increase in Korean middle school students over time. However, we do not yet hold a specific hypothesis in terms of the linear or non‐linear growth, which can represent individual change.…”

“…Particularly in South Korea, there is a strong culture of expectation and aspiration to accomplish high academic achievement (Lee, Puig, Kim, Shin, Lee, & Lee, ). Most Korean adolescents give a great deal of time to their studies, and as a result, they suffer from extreme academic stress due to excessive competition as well as school work (Lee, Puig, Lea, & Lee, ). Hence, the academic stress accrued from elementary to high school is the primary factor for chronic academic burnout.…”

“…These class activities and assessment activities are comparable with the work of formal employees. That is, students experience burnout just as formal workers do when they must carry a heavy academic load (Lee, ). School is a context in which students work (Samela‐Aro, Hannu, & Holopainen, ).…”

“…This tool interprets burnout as a psychological syndrome that arises in response to chronic job stressors (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Whereas early burnout research focused on human service professionals, recent burnout studies have been applied to other groups such as parents and students (Brouwers & Tomic, 2000;Butler & Charles, 1999;Lee et al, 2010;Tomic, Tomic, & Evers, 2004). Since students' main activities at school can be considered as a form of work, 'academic burnout' exists as a response to students' continuing difficulties in coping with multiple achievement pressures (Salmela-Aro, Kiuru, Leskinen, & Nurmi, 2009b).…”

Posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity and control beliefs as the predictors of academic burnout amongst adolescents following the Wenchuan Earthquake

“…Moreover, independent and moderating variables were centred on their respective means to reduce multicollinearity between main effects and interactional terms, and to increase the interpretability of the weights for the interaction terms (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2013). In addition, gender, age, and severity of trauma were considered as compounding variables and controlled in each analysis, due to the relations between gender, age, and trauma severity and burnout (Galek, Flannelly, Greene, & Kudler, 2011; Lee, Puig, Lea, & Lee, 2013; Salmela-Aro & Tynkkynen, 2012). Specifically, we inserted compounding variables (e.g.…”