The Effects Of Stress On Being A Schoolteacher - 1422 Words

Introduction In this essay, I will be looking at the research on the stress involved in being a schoolteacher. Teaching in schools is now widely recognised as being one of the ‘high stress’ occupations, and we need to understand the causes of stress for teachers and how it can be reduced (Dollard et al., 2003; Kyriacou, 2000). The term ‘stress’ in the context of the occupational setting of teaching has been conceptualised in three main ways by researchers (Cole and Walker, 1989; Dunham and Varma, 1998). Some have used the term to describe the level of pressure and demands placed on the teacher. Some have used the term to refer to the teacher’s emotional and behavioural responses to such demands. Most writers define stress as†¦show more content†¦Burnout is often displayed as a lack of interest and enthusiasm for the work, a sense of being detached and withdrawn at work, and by displaying a cynical attitude towards new initiatives and towards colleagues. Measuring teacher stress Early research on teacher stress was bedevilled with problems of measurement. Not surprisingly, research on teacher stress has been dominated by the use of questionnaires. However, self-report measures of teacher stress have many short-comings. Firstly, one teacher’s use of the term stress may differ from another’s – one teacher might say they experienced stress whenever they felt annoyed, whilst another would reserve this term only for when they felt they were on the verge of exploding with anger. Secondly, self-report is subject to context – some teachers might it easier to report stress in one context (e.g. getting all the marking done in time) than in another (e.g. dealing with class control problems). The third problem, is how to take account of the distinction between the frequency of an event occurring and the intensity of the stress such an event invokes: is it sensible to say that a frequently occurring but low intensity source of stress (e.g. pu pils arriving late for a lesson might be very frequent but only causes low level stress) equates to a fairly rare but very intense event (a pupil throwing an object at the teacher in the classroom)? Some researchers have developed more precise