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Stress, Burnout & Support: DR Joel Roache
Stress, Burnout & Support: DR Joel Roache
DR JOEL ROACHE
OVERVIEW
In the U.K. approx. 500,000 workers experience illness as a result of work-related stress and up to 5,000,000 people feel very or extremely stressed by their work, with an economic cost of 3.7 Billion per year. A study conducted for the Times Educational Supplement in 1997 found that 37% of secondary vacancies and 19% of primary vacancies were due to ill-health. In a study of 25,000 professionals, teachers ranked: second behind ambulance officers with worse than average physical health; second behind care providers in respect to poor psychological well-being; sixth behind prison officers, ambulance officers, police, call centre workers, and care providers for levels of job satisfaction.
SOURCES OF STRESS
Sources of stress: factors intrinsic to the job [e.g. work overload]; role in organization [e.g. role ambiguity or conflict]; career development [e.g. lack of job security]; work relationships [e.g. poor collegiate support]; and organizational structure/climate [e.g. little involvement in decision making. Teachers are subject to higher stress levels than other comparable professions and higher than neurotic patients for that matter. National Occupational Health and Safety Commission estimated of the cost of stress in Australia at $105.5 million in 20002001 .
STRESSORS
Stress - the experience of unpleasant emotions, such as tension, frustration, anxiety, anger and depression, resulting from work as a teacher.
for heuristic purposes we can divide causal factors in teacher stress into three broad areas; factors intrinsic to teaching, cognitive factors affecting the individual vulnerability of teachers and systematic factors operating at the institutional and political level. [Pisanti et.al., 2003].
Systemic factors
CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS
Burnout - the syndrome of cynicism and emotional exhaustion in response to chronic stress, linked to teacher attrition. These techniques have a number of inherent limitations; for instance, the fear that reports of finding the job highly stressful or of finding, say, pupil misbehaviour a major source of stress might be indicative of the respondents incompetence as a teacher. [Borg,1990].
Systemic factors
Teachers with more adaptive coping strategies show a lower degree of burnout than teachers with coping strategies based on ignoring or avoiding problematic situations.
Teachers are able to recover from weekly workplace stress over the weekend early in the
Personality Traits
Environmental Conditions
Open to Training
Available coping resources Positive appraisal of events Social/Problem solving skills [planful] Coping strategies [palliative & direct action]
COPING FACTORS
Pearlin & Schooler [1978] define an individuals coping factors as: Responses that change the situation out of which stress arises; Responses that control the meaning of the strainful experience after it occurs but before the emergence of stress; and Responses that function to control of stress itself after it has emerged. These responses may involve: Social/Problem solving skills [planful]; Self-belief, Resilience, Hardiness.
Such support systems act in three dimensions: The practical, derived from peers/colleagues; The informational, derived from school superiors; & The emotional, derived from family/friends.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Overall it is perhaps the general level of alertness and vigilance required by teachers in meeting the potentially threatening variety of demands made upon them that constitutes the essence of why the experience of stress and burnout is so prevalent. [Kyriacou, 1987].
HOW WOULD YOU KNOW IF A TEACHER IN YOUR SCHOOL NEEDED TO IMPROVE THEIR CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT?
What would the teacher be doing (that they shouldnt be)? What wouldnt the teacher be doing (that they should be)?
91% 82%
94%
91% 65% 75% 85% 75%
65%
When students misbehave their teachers become concerned and respond by increasingly employing punishment with aggression & hostility. The use of aggression [e.g. yelling in anger, sarcasm, and group punishments] significantly increases student distraction from learning and student perceptions of their teacher actions as annoying and unjustified. The same teachers decreasingly employ rewards and punishments involving discussion, validation of appropriate behaviour, involvement and trust, leading the students being less responsible & nore distracted from their learning.
Hinting, discussion, and the recognition of positive behaviour,
RECOMMENDATION #2: CLASS MANAGEMENT Discuss each of the strategies below, highlighting any reservations you have about their usefulness. Identify what might be done in your school to increase the likelihood of teachers who need to improve their classroom management adopting these strategies. Lewis has devised a set of management strategies aimed at reducing disciplinary concerns and student distraction, and increasing student responsibility and the amount of teacher/student goodwill [level of support from research indicated].
Management Strategies: 1. Letting all students know that expectations for appropriate classroom behaviour are based on the rights of other students to work and to feel safe. 2. Hinting non-verbally/verbally 4. Hinting about Communal Responsibility 5. Noticing when the more challenging students respect other students rights and saying something nice or recognising their appropriate behaviour in some other way. 6. Basing rewards and recognition on the effort not the behaviour 7. Talking kids out of material rewards 8. Remaining calm when dealing with misbehaviour 9. Explaining why misbehaviour is unfair to other students before telling students how to behave properly or giving them consequences 10. Using a series of increasingly severe consequences for misbehaviour 11. Isolating or exiting the students who continue to act inappropriately 12. Talking with students who are isolated, or exited from class, rather than having another staff member talk with them
Lack of recognition Discipline problems Lack of student motivation Parental involvement Role conflict/ambiguity/overload Coping with system change
Self-esteem & status issues Lack of support Interpersonal demands Emotional labour Relationship with colleagues Lack of governmental support Poor working conditions Workload and time pressures Admin./red tape/bureaucracy School ethos Class sizes Amount of paperwork/lack of resources Diversity of tasks
Cynicism Emotional exhaustion Depression Depersonalization Anxiety Suicidal ideas General irritability Burnout Impaired occupational functioning Dissatisfaction with career choice Absenteeism Increased staff turnover Early retirement
Available coping resources Positive appraisal of events Social/Problem solving skills [planful] Coping strategies [palliative & direct action]
REFERENCES
Australian Education Union [2007]. Beginning Teacher Survey: Results & Report. Accessible from: www.aeufederal.org.au/Publications/Btsurvey07sum.pdf Austin, V., Shah, S. & Muncer, S. [2005]. Teacher stress and coping strategies used to reduce stress. Occupational Therapy International, 12[2]: 63-80. Borg, M.G. [1990]. Occupational Stress in British Educational Setting: a review. Educational Psychology, 10[2]: 103-125. Caulfield, N., Chang, C., Dollard, M.F., & Elshaug, C. [2004]. A Review of Occupational Stress Interventions in Australia. International Journal of Stress Management 11[2]: 149-166. Fleishman, J.A. [1984]. Personality Characteristics and Coping Patterns. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 25[June]: 229-244. Greenglass, E., Fiksenbaum, L. & Burke, R.J. [1996]. Components of Social Support, Buffering Effects and Burnout: Implications for Psychological Functioning. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 9: 185-197. Howard, S. & Johnston, B. [2004]. Resilient Teachers: resisting stress and burnout. Social Psychology of Education, 7: 399-420. Jarvis, M. [2002]. Teacher Stress: A Critical Review of Recent Findings and Suggestions for Future Research Directions. Downloaded on the 15/09/07 from http:/www.isma.org.uk/stressnw/teacherstress1.htm. Johnson, S., Cooper, G., Cartwright, S., Donald, I., Taylor, P. & Millet, C. [2005]. The experience of workrelated stress across occupations. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 20: 178-187. Kyriacou, C. [1987]. Teacher stress and burnout: an international review. Educational Research 29[2]:146151. Mearns, J. & Cain, J.E. [2003]. Relationship Between Teachers Occupational Stress and their Roles of Coping and Negative Mood Regulation Expectations. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 16[1]: 71-82. Pearlin, L.I. & Schooler, C. [1978]. The Structure of Coping. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 19[March]: 2-21. Pisanti, R., Gagliardi, M.P., Razzino, S. & Betini, M. [2003]. Occupational stress and wellness among Italian secondary school teachers. Psychology and Health 18[4]: 523-536. Travers, C.J. & Cooper, C.L. [1993]. Mental health, job satisfaction and occupational stress among UK