Dissertation
An exploration of #TeacherQuitTok: a qualitative exploratory case study of teacher burnout narratives on TikTok
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Drexel University
Jun 2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00010680
Abstract
Teacher burnout in K-12 public education has been a well-researched experience. Burnout is one of the many causes of teacher attrition, which is detrimental to student and school outcomes. Beginning in healthcare research, the expanse of burnout research has identified factors that cause burnout, can predict the extent someone will experience burnout, and how employers can mitigate burnout. Experiences of burnout changed and heightened with the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic and ensuring years since leading to a massive impact on workplace culture in the United States. Phenomenon such as quiet quitting and the great resignation began to impact workers across various fields. The problem of teacher burnout today should be of much concern for district and school leaders across the country and in society. This study contributed to a gap in understanding about teacher burnout on two levels. The first is lack of qualitative research regarding teacher burnout since 2020. The second more prominent gap is the ways in which teachers discuss burnout on social media, particularly on the platform TikTok. This study was an exploratory qualitative case study that examined the content of TikTok videos in 2022 and in 2023 that were created by current or former teachers and uploaded to TikTok using the hashtag #TeacherQuitTok. In addition to 30 videos, the top 15 comments of each video were analyzed. For both the transcripts of the videos and of the comments, in vivo, versus, and emotion coding were used as first cycle coding methods with a focused second cycle coding applied afterwards. Themes were drawn from the codes and categories. What resulted was a rich description of the landscape and content of the videos and comments on #TeacherQuitTok. The themes helped form the basis of findings and recommendations both for practice and for future research. The recommendations of this study can help to create community among educators experiencing burnout. In addition, school and district leaders were prompted to learn from the challenges leading to burnout and attrition derived from the videos and use TikTok as a tool to learn more about their teachers' lived experiences. The recommendations for future research prompt future studies to use TikTok as a research site or to corroborate findings with other research frameworks. Keywords: teacher burnout, teacher attrition, coronavirus pandemic, TikTok, qualitative exploratory case study, social media
Metrics
92 File views/ downloads
56 Record Views
Details
- Title
- An exploration of #TeacherQuitTok
- Creators
- Katherine R. Curry
- Contributors
- Mary Jean Tecce DeCarlo (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- xii, 166 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- School of Education (1997-2026); Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991021890115304721