Mediating effects of future time perspective on the relationship between mindfulness and learning burnout in college students: A cross-sectional descriptive study

Abstract

With the rise of positive psychology, educators gradually pay attention to the construction of psychological capital of college students. Mindfulness is linked to learning burnout; however, little research has examined how mindfulness is associated with learning burnout via future time perspective. The aims of this study were to investigate the relationship between mindfulness state, future time perspective and learning burnout of college students, and explore the mediating effect of future time perspective on mindfulness and learning burnout. A cross-sectional design was used. A total of 358 college students were enrolled from Harbin Medical university. General information questionnaire, the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), the learning burnout scale and The Future Time Perspective Scale were used for investigation. Calculations were performed using SPSS Statistics, version 25. There was negative correlation between positive mindfulness and learning burnout (r = −0.41, P < .01), and positive correlation between future time perspective and mindfulness (r = 0.38, P < .01), and negative correlation with learning burnout (r = −0.37, P < .01). Furthermore, future time perspective (β = −0.40, P < .01) had a significant mediating effect on the relationship between mindfulness and learning burnout. Educators should improve the mindfulness of college students by developing and implementing future time perspective, in order to improve their learning burnout.

1. Introduction

With the new trend and demand for medical development, college education faces new opportunities and challenges. In education advancement and reform processes, students must grasp the knowledge and skills to provide quality care in their future careers.^[1] College students suffer from academic stress, including class assignments, various kinds of examinations, clinical reports, skill assessments, and internship evaluations.^[2] Students exposed to chronic academic stress may develop learning burnout. Learning burnout refers to the negative attitude and behavior toward learning caused by academic stress or lack of interest.^[3,4] Learning burnout not only affects academic achievement, but also brings negative effects on an individual’s physiological, psychological, behavioral and interpersonal levels, and may even lead to suicide in serious cases.^[5] Therefore, learning burnout is an important indicator to measure students’ mental health. The influencing factors of learning burnout include individual and environmental factors, such as personality characteristics, academic burden, social support, self-efficacy, and professional identity.^[6] Many empirical findings have proven that a mindfulness state influences students’ learning attitudes and behaviors.^[7,8] A negative correlation is observed between mindfulness and learning burnout.^[9] However, the internal mechanism of mindfulness affecting learning burnout of college students has not been discussed in the previous studies.

Mindfulness is a kind of awareness of paying attention to the present.^[10,11] More individuals who can maintain mindfulness have the ability to focus on the present, which is similar to the character strengths and strengths in positive psychology,^[12] namely a kind of trait. The extension-construction theory of positive emotions holds that experiencing positive emotions broadens people’s transient thoughts, and at the same time helps build lasting personal resources, reduce emotional exhaustion and weaken learning burnout.^[13] Individuals with high mindfulness traits actually experience the world and experience more positive emotions. Empirical studies have also proved this point. Mindfulness training can effectively reduce the sense of burnout by improving the level of individual mindfulness and increasing the positive emotional experience of individuals, and this positive effect is still significant 10 months later.^[14] Academic emotion theory holds that positive academic emotion can reduce individual learning burnout. Empirical studies have confirmed that mindfulness, as a psychological protective factor, can make students maintain positive and good academic emotions, effectively improve individual positive emotions and life satisfaction, and alleviate burnout.

Future time perspectives is a kind of cognition and positive expectation of future time, which is closely related to planning ability and plays a positive role in individual development.^[15] Mindfulness is the awareness and attention of the present moment, which is closely linked to the concept of time.^[16] Therefore, mindfulness and future time perspective represent the present and future positive time concept respectively,^[17] belonging to the 2 dimensions of positive time concept. According to the theory of optimal balanced time concept, there is an optimal balance point of past, present and future time view of individuals. Individuals at the optimal balance point have a higher level of subjective well-being and mental health, while a lower level of burnout.^[18,19] Individuals with high mindfulness traits have a more balanced sense of time in the present. Individuals with this sense of the present have the characteristics of accepting the past and actively pursuing future goals. They are less likely to dwell on past regrets or unrealistic fantasies about the future, have the flexibility to adapt to life,^[20,21] and see the future as variable and hopeful rather than “fatalistic.” The concept of past, present and future reaches a steady-state balance.^[22] Therefore, a positive view of time in the present can predict a positive view of time in the future.

However, to our knowledge, the relationship between future time perspective, learning burnout and mindfulness has not been absolutely confirmed among Chinese college students. Hence, the present study aims to explore the relationship between future time perspective, learning burnout and mindfulness among college students and further uncover the mediating role of future time perspective to reveal the internal mechanism of mindfulness on learning burnout and provide evidence for alleviate their learning burnout.

2. Methods

2.1. Design and sample

This descriptive correlation study was designed to examine the relationship among future time perspective, learning burnout and mindfulness in college students. Stratified random sampling method was used to select college students of Harbin Medical University. The inclusion criteria were: college students,) willing to participate, and being able to complete the questionnaires. Finally, 358 students participated in this study and were included in our analysis.

2.2. Instruments

The general demographic questionnaire included age, gender, grade, residence, and whether they were from a single-child family.

Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ): The FFMQ was compiled by Baer in 2006 and revised by Deng into Chinese version in 2011.^[23] The scale includes 39 items, and each item is scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely inconsistent) to 5 (completely consistent). The total score ranges from 39 to 195, and the higher the score is, the more mindfulness state. The scale has good reliability and validity. The Cronbach’s α was 0.86 in the college students^[24] and 0.87 in this study.

The revised Chinese version of the future time perspective^[25] was used to evaluate the future time perspective of college students, which was a single-dimensional scale with 5 items (e.g., “When I want to accomplish something, I will set goals and consider reaching them Specific path to the goal”), using Likert’s 5-point scale (1 = “completely disagree,” 5 = “completely agree”), the higher the score, the better the future time insight. This scale has been widely used among Chinese students and has good reliability and validity. The Cronbach’s α was 0.83 in the previous study^[26] and 0.84 in this study.

The learning burnout scale developed by Lian et al^[27] was used to evaluate the learning burnout level of college students. It consists of 20 items in 3 subcategories: low spirit, inappropriate behavior, low sense of accomplishment. Each item is scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (absolutely do not agree) to 5 (absolutely agree). Higher scores indicated a higher level of learning burnout. This scale has been widely used among Chinese students and has good reliability and validity. The Cronbach’s α was 0.88 in the previous study^[28] and 0.89 in this study.

2.3. Data collection

The study was conducted from May 1 to May 7, 2022. An online survey platform (https://www.wjx.cn) in China was used in this study. The online survey link was sent by the researcher to all college students who were willing to participate in the study. All data were collected by the WenJuanXing program. In order to improve the accuracy of questionnaire responses, the electronic questionnaire was equipped with logic check, error reminder, automatic jump and other verification procedures.

2.4. Ethical consideration

This study was approved by the Ethics committee of Harbin medical university. The researcher illustrated the aim of the study and promised that all data would be anonymized. Students could withdraw from the study at any time with any reason. An online informed consent form was completed by each participant.

2.5. Statistical analysis

The Statistical Packages for Social Sciences, version 25 (IBM Corp., Chicago, IL) was used to analyze the data. The mean and standard deviation of learning burnout of different ages and grades were analyzed by descriptive statistics, independent sample t test and one-way ANOVA. Pearson’s correlation test was used to investigate the relationship among future time perspective, learning burnout and mindfulness. The mediation effect test model of Bootstrap was used to test and analyze the mediating effect of future time perspectives whether played a mediating role between learning burnout and mindfulness. A P value ≤ .05 was considered statistically significant.

3. Results

The average age of the participants was 22.26 ± 3.15 years with a range of 17 to 25 years. A total of 324 participants (90.50%) were women, the residence in urban accounted for 49.42%, and 194 participants (54.19%) were from a single-child family.

As shown in Table 1, the total score of learning burnout has significant differences among grades, residence and child-only family; however, there was no significance among gender (P > .05).

Table 1.

The difference between of different groups of learning burnout (N = 358).

Variables	Professional identity score	t/F	P
Gender
Male	53.12 ± 10.71	0.38*	.71
Female	53.58 ± 10.11
Grade
Freshmen	50.11 ± 9.84	4.86†	<.01
Sophomore	51.05 ± 10.23
Junior	53.73 ± 10.08
Senior	54.30 ± 10.29
Residence
Urban	51.05 ± 10.63	3.83*	<.01
Rural	54.60 ± 10.17
Single-child family
Yes	54.67 ± 10.96	2.55*	.01
No	51.91 ± 10.18

^*t test.

^†One-way analysis of variance.

The mean scores of future time perspectives, learning burnout and mindfulness were found to be 15.58 ± 3.63, 53.25 ± 10.20, and 116.57 ± 17.03, respectively. Furthermore, Table 2 shows the significant negative correlations between participants’ learning burnout and mindfulness (r = −0.41, P < .01) and future time perspectives (r = −0.37, P < .01). Future time perspectives had a significant positive correlation with mindfulness (r = 0.38, P < .01).

Table 2.

Means and correlation coefficients of the variables (N = 358).

Variables	Mean ± SD	Mindfulness (r)	Learning burnout (r)
Mindfulness	116.57 ± 17.03
Learning burnout	53.25 ± 10.20	−0.41**
Future time perspectives	15.58 ± 3.63	0.38**	−0.37**

SD = standard deviation.

^**P < .01.

In the regression analysis, we set learning burnout as the dependent variable and mindfulness as the independent variable and future time perspectives as mediating variable. The results are shown in Table 3. The results showed that future time perspectives mediated the effects of professional identity on learning burnout, with an explanatory power of 62.50%.

Table 3.

Mediating analyze of future time perspectives on mindfulness on learning burnout (N = 358).

	β	SE	95% CI		Account
			Lower	Upper
Total effect	−0.64	0.07	−0.60	−0.34
Direct effect	−0.24	0.08	−0.36	−0.05	37.50%
Indirect effect	−0.40	0.07	−0.83	−0.51	62.50%

4. Discussion

In the current study, we observed that future time perspectives mediated the relationship between mindfulness on learning burnout among college students.

The learning burnout level was higher than that reported in the other studies.^[29,30] The present study was conducted in the post-pandemic period. Students who have experienced the Covid-19 epidemic could associate with learning burnout.^[31] Our finding indicated that learning burnout varies among different grades. Specifically, the scores of senior college students were significantly higher than that of other grades, which might be related to the fact that senior college students experienced more professional tasks.^[30] Urban residents have a lower learning burnout, explaining that urban students have better information sources and several job choices. They can choose their favorite majors, and their learning burnout level is relatively low.^[32] Moreover, the present study demonstrated that the professional identity differed between single-child families and non-single-child families. Students from single-child families have the strong internal motivation and care more about their interest in the occupation. However, no significant difference in professional identity was observed in sex, which is inconsistent with previous studies. The research conducted by Tang et al^[3] illustrated that the learning burnout of females was higher than male students in the medical major, which may be related to the different educational environments.

This study shows that future time perspectives is significantly negatively correlated with learning burnout, which is consistent with previous studies.^[33] College students with strong insight into future time have a clearer plan for their future and a clear cognition of their learning ability. When they encounter learning difficulties, they are more likely to change their mentality and actions from negative to positive, so they are not easy to get tired of learning. On the contrary, college students with low insight into future time, low awareness of time and lack of confidence in their learning ability are easy to retreat, escape and anxiety in the face of learning difficulties, leading to learning burnout.^[34] The results indicate that improving the perspective of college students may reduce their learning burnout level. Educators should enhance college students’ awareness of time, improve the utilization rate of time, effective planning for the future and so on.

The analysis of the mediating effect of future time perspectives on mindfulness and academic burnout found that future time perspectives partially mediated between mindfulness and learning burnout. Most previous studies focused on the mediating role of emotional variables such as happiness and core self-evaluation in the relationship between mindfulness and learning burnout,^[35] rarely from the perspective of cognition and motivation. This study extends the effect of mindfulness on learning burnout to the cognitive and motivational levels. The results show that mindfulness can not only directly predict learning burnout, but also significantly negatively predict learning burnout through the mediating effect of future time insight.^[13] Mindfulness can increase the positive emotional experience of individuals, thus effectively reducing the sense of burnout.^[14] At the same time, negative academic emotions can easily lead to learning burnout. As an effective regulation strategy for academic emotions, mindfulness can reduce negative academic emotions, enhance positive learning emotions such as pride, relaxation, satisfaction and hope, and reduce learning burnout.^[36] In the teaching design, teachers can integrate mindfulness into classroom teaching and help students relax and maintain positive learning emotions through mindfulness training before class, thus reducing the occurrence of students’ learning burnout.

4.1. Limitations

Although this study identified the relationship of college students’ future time perspectives partially, mindfulness and learning burnout, there were still limitations to this study. Firstly, the participants of this study were recruited from one university, and readers need to raise caution when applying our findings to college students from other countries or from different cultural backgrounds. Further studies should be conducted on larger samples in different cultures. Secondly, the self-reporting nature of the measures means that responses were subject to bias and socially desirable responding.

5. Conclusions

The results of this study suggested that the learning burnout of college students was high and was negatively associated with the future time perspectives and mindfulness. Moreover, this study confirmed the mediating effect of future time perspectives on mindfulness and learning burnout in college students. The results of the current study could help educators better understand the relationship between future time perspectives, mindfulness and learning burnout. It is suggested that college educators should assist students in cultivating mindfulness to improve their future time perspectives and thus decrease learning burnout.

Acknowledgment

The authors were grateful for all the participants and all student counselors in this study for their corporation.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: Li Yang, Qin Shi Da, Jia Xiang Rui.

Formal analysis: Li Yang, Qin Shi Da.

Funding acquisition: Li Yang.

Investigation: Qin Shi Da, Jia Xiang Rui.

Methodology: Li Yang, Qin Shi Da, Jia Xiang Rui.

Project administration: Li Yang.

Resources: Qin Shi Da, Jia Xiang Rui.

Supervision: Li Yang.

Validation: Qin Shi Da, Jia Xiang Rui.

Writing – original draft: Li Yang, Qin Shi Da, Jia Xiang Rui.

Writing – review & editing: Li Yang, Qin Shi Da, Jia Xiang Rui.