Inclusion Fatigue: Emotional Burnout of Teachers Working in Long-Term Inclusive Classrooms in Pakistan

Abstract

Inclusive education has increased professional liability on the part of teachers and in most cases emotional, pedagogical and ethical work that has to be carried out in a long term basis. This paper investigates inclusion fatigue which is the emotional exhaustion of the teachers working in the long-term inclusive classes in the Pakistani primary and secondary schools. The research problem is based on the fact that little empirical interest exists in emotional impacts of the long inclusive instruction, especially in education systems with scarce resources, and those that are highly exam-based. The present research aims were to study the experiences, interpretation, and management of the emotional exhaustion in teachers based on the long-term inclusion responsibilities. A qualitative study design was used in which semi-structured interviews were administered on teachers in both the public and the private schools in Pakistan. It was presumed in the study that the emotional experiences depend on the influence of institutional expectations, the intensity of work, and the support structures and the boundary conditions were characterized by the case of long-term exposure to inclusion teaching conditions. The results indicate long-term emotional pressure with the presence of exhaustion traits, frustration, and professional depletion, which can be seen as the patterns in the literature on international burnout and indicate the presence of context-specific stressors in Pakistan. The research affirms that inclusion fatigue is a structural issue and not individual failure, which calls on the necessity of institutional sources of support and long-term inclusion policies.