EFL teachers’ cyberloafing behaviors: Can burnout predict them?

Cyberloafing, defined as the use of Internet for personal purposes during working hours, is an increasing phenomenon in view of a broad spread of Internet technologies. Although the majority of research on cyberloafing behaviors has focused on employers’ cyberloafing in different organizational environments, very little is known about its prevalence in educational settings. At the same time, there have been few research studies on the relationship between cyberloafing behaviors and other important occupational variables in mainstream education, such as teacher burnout. In this light, the present study examined the cyberloafing situation among Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and its possible variances in terms of two demographic factors of school type and educational level. Additionally, it explored the possible association between the cyberloafing behaviors and the occupational variable of teacher burnout. To this end, 824 EFL teachers, working in different Iranian high schools, first responded to the cyberloafing scale of Akbulut et al. (2016). The scale had been validated in the pilot phase of the study through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The participants also responded to Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educator’s Survey, developed and validated by Maslach et al. (1996). The findings revealed that the engagement of the participants in cyberloafing behaviors was at a moderate level. They were more involved in the sharing dimension. Also, the teachers in junior high schools reported a significantly higher level of cyberloafing behaviors. As for teacher burnout, the multiple regression analyses depicted significant contributions of the three burnout factors, especially depersonalization, to the different cyberloafing dimensions. The pedagogical implications for educational policymakers and L2 teacher educators are also discussed.