Abstract:

The functioning of the contemporary university requires drawing attention to its human capital. In assessing the quality, not only knowledge, skills, experience, but also values, attitudes, motivation or involvement of university teachers, for whom the main threat appears to be burnout, should be taken into account. This is because a high level of emotional commitment to work, the identification with didactic and educational duties, is a factor that contributes to burnout and even is conditioning it. Moreover, burnout is favored by the nature of contemporary work which mainly requires intellectual effort, particularly in terms of high stress.

By analyzing the learning-teaching process from an academic teacher's point of view, its proper course can interfere or hinder, in principle, all symptoms of stress and burnout. The physiological effects of stress and symptoms of emotional exhaustion result in a reduction in the employee's overall disposition. Psychological symptoms affect academically important features of the academic teacher, such as memory, concentration or objectivity. Symptoms related to the pattern of behavior and depersonalization, instrumental treatment of students, may adversely affect their perception and therefore the expectations formulated towards them and, consequently, the actual achievements. Burned out academic teacher, who draws no satisfaction from their jobs can potentially blame the students, assigning them various negative features. Also organizational effects of stress and burnout can negatively affect the actual course and perception of the learning-teaching process and its quality.

This article presents the results of the quantity-quality research devoted to the problem that have been carried out among university teachers of Lublin. It shows that teachers, who in their subjective assessment experience varying degrees of burnout, rate lower selected elements of the quality of learning-teaching. The observed differences concern both the overall assessment of the quality of the learning-teaching process as well as the student factor (student preparation for classes, their interest in activities and personal culture) and organizational one (daily and weekly schedules, and housing conditions). The obtained results allowed to partially confirm the correlation between burnout and perception of the learning-teaching process by assessing its quality and indication of directions of potential actions, which will reduce the negative impact of the researched phenomenon.

Keywords:

Burnout, occupational stress, university staff, university management.