Abstract
Burnout syndrome as a high risk factor for teachers is well established term in scientific and also in public discourse. But what does the term burnout syndrome actually mean? What is the relation between science and teachers themselves? To better understand it, it is necessary to deal with science on the one hand and the actors on the other.
This study therefore wants to answer the question of the differences between social representation of burnout (teacher's perspective) and burnout as an analytic category (perspective of the science). The general topic of the social representations is mentioned in the introduction, followed by the description of methods and results part.
The comparison of the perspectives is in the discussion. Our data contains questioner of burnout (N = 2394), interviews with teachers about burnout (N = 46) and the items of the most used measures of burnout.
The results indicate that the social representation of teachers with burnout experience overlaps scientific concept of burnout. However, the social representation of teachers without this experience does not.
These teachers accentuate mainly the extrinsic level of burnout (from a certain point of view, they are more focused on the consequences) because the intrinsic level (the causes - exhaustion) remains hidden. The article is also dealing with the consequences in school reality.