Several factors may affect the academic performance of students. Some of these factors improve academic performance and the others have detrimental effects on this academic construction. One of the most recently studied factors which affect students’ academic performance is academic burnout. Traditionally, academic burnout is defined as a three dimensional syndrome which includes emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach and Jackson, 1981). Burnout among college students refers to tiredness result from academic demands (emotional exhaustion), having a pessimistic sense and lack of interest toward academic tasks (cynicism), and feeling of incompetency as a student (inefficacy) (Shaufeli et al. 2002a, cited by Zhang et al. 2007). Evidence indicate that people with academic burnout may experience signs such as lack of interest toward academic issues, inability for attending in academic classes continuously, disaffiliation in class activities, sense of meaninglessness in academic activities, and incapability in acquisition of academic issues (Yang and Farn, 2005).
Neuman (1990) argues that academic burnout in students is one of the most significant fields of study in universities for several reasons. First, academic burnout can be the main reason of different behaviors in students such as academic performance; second, it can influence the relationship between students and their faculty in universities; and ultimately, academic burnout can affect students’ enthusiasm toward education. Therefore, it is definitely expected to reduce academic burnout by improving the academic achievement and learning motivation in students (Yang, 2004).
One of the known variables which can affect academic burnout is the quality of learning experience. This term was firstly defined by Neuman (1990). The quality of learning experience implies students’ perceptions toward direct and indirect inputs that they have received from college or university. For prevention and intervention, there have been conducted several studies and research to diagnose the antecedents and consequences of academic burnout which include environmental and individual aspects (Langelaan et al. 2006; Maslach et al. 2001; Shaufeli and Bakker, 2004; cited by Zhang et al. 2007).
In the past decades, investigators have addressed self-efficacy as one of the effective individual factors in explaining burnout phenomenon (Shaufeli et al. 1993; cited by Yang and Farn, 2005). Self-efficacy is defined as the belief that a person can do something successfully (Woolfolk, 2004). Some of previous experiments have confirmed the relationship between self-efficacy and burnout in describing the relationship between burnout and physiological manners (Yang and Farn, 2005;Hobfoll and Freedy, 1993). Recently conducted investigations indicate that self-efficacy is a good predictor of academic burnout among students (Brouwers and Tomic, 2000). Moreover, later researches about the relationship between self-efficacy and burnout concluded that self-efficacy beliefs are negatively associated with depersonalization and emotional exhaustion and are positively correlated with decreased personal accomplishment in students (Evers et al. 2002). These findings displayed that a higher score in self-efficacy indices is along with the decreased burnout symptoms in persons. Other evidence showed that emotional exhaustion has a closed relationship with academic stress (Murberg and Bru, 2004). Also, Pessimistic attitude and cynicism toward academic issues can expectedly decline learning motivation (Deci et al. 1991) and the feeling of failure can be related to decreased self-esteem (Saunders et al. 2004). Previous research in the field of industrial and organizational psychology have shown that burnout has several negative consequences such as absenteeism, turnover, poor health, and higher level of depression (Toppinen-Tanner et al. 2005). Duran et al. (2006) investigated the predictors of academic burnout and academic engagement and concluded that stress and overall self-efficacy are related to academic burnout and academic engagement. By the way, by controlling these two variables, they identified that emotional intelligence can also serve as a predictor of academic burnout. In addition, Shwarzer and Hallum (2008) in the two separated studies (first one among 1203 teachers and the second one among 458 teachers) about job pressure and burnout in Germany and Syria found out that teacher’s self-efficacy is correlated with their job pressure and burnoiut. Furthermore, current researches have shown that faculty climate and received positive motivation from professors have a negative significant relationship with academic burnout (Salmela-Aro et al. 2008;Kiura et al. 2008). In fact, the most important novelty of the research is to investigate internal and external predictors of academic burnout simultaneously.
Considering the past and current researches in the above, this study wants to investigate the relationship between individual self-efficacy and external quality of learning experience with academic burnout. Thus, the hypotheses will be:
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1.
There is a negative significant relationship between quality of learning experience and academic burnout.
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1.1.
There is a negative significant relationship between quality of learning experience and academic inefficacy.
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1.2.
There is a negative significant relationship between quality of learning experience and cynicism.
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1.3.
There is a negative significant relationship between quality of learning experience and emotional exhaustion.
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2.
There is a negative significant relationship between self-efficacy and academic burnout.
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2.1.
There is a negative significant relationship between self-efficacy and academic inefficacy.
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2.2.
There is a negative significant relationship between self-efficacy and cynicism.
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2.3.
There is a negative significant relationship between self-efficacy and emotional exhaustion.
