Abstract Background Occupational burnout is increasingly common among college teachers, manifested by emotional exhaustion, dehumanization and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment, which seriously endangers their professional and mental health. Existing research mostly focuses on causes such as work stress and insufficient support, but there is still a lack of empirical research using positive psychology for targeted intervention. Positive psychology focuses on cultivating positive emotions, engagement, meaning and relationships, and has the potential to improve psychological resilience. The purpose of this study is to use a structured positive psychology intervention program to test its effect on alleviating professional burnout and improving self-efficacy and work engagement of college teachers, with a view to providing empirical evidence for the psychological support system for college teachers. Methods The study adopted a randomized controlled design, recruiting 240 college teachers who met the burnout criteria, and randomly assigned them to the intervention group and the control group, with 120 students each. The intervention group received a 12-week, 90-minute weekly positive psychology group intervention, which covered positive emotion cultivation, strengths identification, gratitude exercises, meaning reconstruction and goal setting, and was led by a trained psychological counselor. The control group received no intervention. The study used burnout, well-being, self-efficacy and student interaction satisfaction scales to evaluate before the intervention, at the end of the intervention and 3 months after the intervention. Data analysis used repeated measures analysis of variance and multiple regression, controlling covariates such as teaching years, professional titles, and gender to test the intervention effect and its mechanism. Results The total burnout score of the intervention group at the end of the intervention was significantly lower than that of the control group, with emotional exhaustion reduced by 26.8%, dehumanization reduced by 18.4%, and personal accomplishment increased by 22.1%. Repeated measures analysis showed that the interaction between time and group was significant, indicating that the intervention effect was sustained, and the total burnout score of the intervention group was still lower than the baseline at follow-up. The intervention group's happiness increased by 19.7%, self-efficacy increased by 15.3%, and student interaction satisfaction increased by 13.6%. Mediation analysis showed that self-efficacy plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between burnout and interaction satisfaction. Regression analysis showed that teachers with higher emotional exhaustion before the intervention benefited more significantly. Discussion Research shows that structured positive psychology intervention can effectively alleviate the burnout of college teachers and improve their sense of well-being, self-efficacy and the quality of teacher-student interaction. The results support the practicality of positive psychology in occupational health promotion and suggest that systematic psychological training can enhance teachers' psychological resources to cope with stress. The intervention effect is sustained and particularly effective for individuals with high burnout, providing an empirical basis for colleges and universities to promote targeted psychological support. In the future, online hybrid intervention models can be explored and their impact on teaching effectiveness and organizational behavior can be tracked over the long term. It is recommended that colleges and universities incorporate such interventions into teacher development systems as normalized burnout prevention and mitigation measures.
Pengju Liang (Sun,) studied this question.