Effects of Motivational Interviewing and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapies on Academic Burnout among Extra-mural Students in Ekiti State

Abstract

Academic burnout is a mental and emotional fatigue state caused by continuous stress among extra-mural students. This syndrome is usually caused by repeated failure and overload of work in the school, which eventually leads to high dropout rate, truancy and failure. Academic burnout hinders academic success of students, as it truncates their advancement in moving to the next academic stage. Previous studies focused largely on predictors of academic burnout of in-school adolescents, while little attention was paid to extra-mural students. This study, therefore, was designed to determine the effects of Motivational Interviewing Therapy (MIT) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (M-BCT) on academic burnout among extra-mural students in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Moderating effects of academic self-efficacy and goal setting were also examined. Pretest-posttest control group quasi experimental design with 3x3x3 factorial matrix was adopted. Three extra-mural centres were randomly selected in Ekiti State, while the simple random sampling technique was used to select participants from each of the remedial study centres. The remedial centres were randomly assigned to MIT (29), M-BCT (51) and control (25) groups, making a total of 105 participants. The instruments used were Academic Burnout Indicator Inventory (for screening – ?=0.92), Maslash Academic Burnout (?=0.70), Academic self-Efficacy (?=0.86) and Goal Setting (?=0.80) scales and instructional guides. Data were subjected to descriptive statistics, Analysis of covariance and Scheffe post-hoc test at 0.05 level of significance. Participants’ age was 22.14±3.15years. The majority of the participants were female (61.5%). There was a significant main effect of treatment on academic burnout of the participants (F(2;84)=140.13. partial ?2=0.77). The participants in the control group (111.04) had the highest mean scores on academic burnout, followed by the M-BCT (88.20) and the MIT (61.59) groups. There was no significant main effect of academic self-efficacy and goal setting on academic burnout. There was a significant interaction effect of treatment and goal setting on academic burnout (F(2;84) =3.93, partial ?2=.16), in favour of the participants with high goal setting from the MIT group. Motivational interviewing and mindfulness-based cognitive therapies reduced academic burnout among extra-mural students in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Counselling psychologists and other help professionals should adopt these therapies.