The Effectiveness of Metacognitive Training Package on Academic Burnout in Female Students with Behavioral Problems

Children's behavioral disorders are common and disabling disorders that cause many problems for families of school children and are associated with a high prevalence of social problems and negative consequences. Such disorders significantly affect the academic, social, and professional performance of children and adolescents and increase the risk of developing mental illness in adolescence. On the other hand, one of the variables that affects an individual's academic performance is academic burnout. Burnout, as an indicator of the mental health of professionals, consists of fatigue, suspense, and inefficiency. Burnout in a professional context implies emotional exhaustion, suspicion, and lack of work efficiency. So, this study investigated the effectiveness of a metacognitive training package on academic burnout among female students with behavioral problems in Yazd City, Iran.

This research was applied in terms of purpose and methodology; it was a quasi–experimental research with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The study's statistical population consisted of all female students with behavioral disorders living in Yazd City (Yazd Province, center of Iran) who were studying in the first year of high school in the academic year of 2016–2017. Using random, multi–stage, and purposeful sampling, two groups of 20 students with behavioral problems were selected as a research sample for control and experiment groups. Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) (self–report form for teenagers) (Minaee, 2006) was used to identify students with behavioral disorders. The Academic Burnout Inentory (ABI) (Breso et al., 2007) was used to assess academic burnout. The experimental group received 12 metacognitive training sessions. During this period, the control group did not receive any intervention. To describe and analyze the collected data, mean and standard deviation were used in descriptive statistics and multivariate covariance analysis in inferential statistics at a significance level of 0.05 in SPSS version 24.

The results showed that after removing the effect of the pretest, there was a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in the components of academic burnout, including academic fatigue (p<0.001), academic disinterest (p<0.001), and academic inefficiency (p<0.001).

Based on the research findings, metacognitive training effectively improves academic burnout in students with behavioral problems. Therefore, the mentioned educational package can be used to reduce the academic burnout of these students.