Impact Of Workplace Stress In Education Sector
By Swaleha Sindhi
23 October, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Introduction
While there are many different occupations in the education sector, teaching is identified as a particularly stressful job (Smith et al, 2000). Stress among teachers is a contributor to illness as well as a cause for some leaving the profession (Aitken 2002, cited in Verdugo and Vere). Many young teachers who began their training with high motivation and noble ideas are exhausted or almost burn out within a few years of job. Teaching job is getting more and more stressful working in schools pose a number of situations that are unique to education and the current climate of uncertainty and criticism further undermines the professionalism and confidence of many hard working teachers. Stress is a natural biological response it allows our biological system to prepare itself to do something – either attack (fight) or run away (flight). Acute stress represents that immediate panic which drives the fight or flight response but if this stress continues we begin to suffer from a more chronic condition, this can not only impact on us psychologically but can also lower our immune system, making us more vulnerable to physical illness. For teacher absenteeism the main reason is lack of job satisfaction. The implication of this is that work performance declines this impacting on learner performance, poor pass rates, resulting in schools-categorized being an underperforming school. Stress is a highly personalized phenomenon and can vary widely even in identical situations for different reasons. The severity of job stress depends on the magnitude of the demands that are being made and the individual’s sense of control or decision-making latitude he or she has in dealing with them. Not all educators have coping mechanisms to deal with these types of stress. It is important for a school head to understand the repercussions of stress among teachers. They must understand the benefits of academic achievement of a healthy and happy school.
Principals must play a major role in tackling stress through prevention rather than management. They must involve all the staff members in decision making process. Today there are lot many reasons for the teachers to feel stressed out, be it professional training of teachers, student discipline issues, parent demands, meeting the target etc. One area where teachers often feel they are wasting valuable time is their professional training programme. Thus here principals need to consult staff regarding the programmes that would benefit them. Another main reason for the teacher stress is the staff meetings scheduled after school timings. Finally, what Principals really need to understand is that tackling stress isn't just about individuals, it's about the whole school.
Causes of Stress
Gold and Roth (1993) identifies causes of stress, which are organized into two categories, namely:
Professional stressors
Such as disruptive students, excessive paperwork and limited timeframes, complex scheduling, burdensome workload, lack of mobility, environmental pressure, administrative entanglement, and situational factors such as role conflict and role ambiguity have been reported to affect significant job satisfaction for many educators. Difficulty in carefully defining the duties of educators can also be stressful and contribute to a lack of personal accomplishment which diminishes their feeling of success. Administrative entanglement and situational factors such as role conflict and role ambiguity have been reported to affect significant job satisfaction for many educators.
Personal stressors
Includes reasons that causes educators to be stressed such as health, relationships, financial problems, recreational activities and living conditions add to the many sources of stress with which educators are constantly having to contend with. Role conflict, as Galloway et al. (2005: 259) state, occurs when an individual receives competing and conflicting expectations from others while role ambiguity (Daft 2002:492) results from having unclear expectations resulting in many complications and stress in the workplace. Moorhead and Griffin (2004: 463) state that role overloads occur when there are too many expect role ambiguity are prevalent in schools as a result of excessive paper work, large classrooms, and abnormal teacher: pupil ratio.
Conclusion
Teacher stress currently the case with the newly mushroomed private schools in India, where the expectation is that teachers be ready for all the meetings and activities after schooling hours, collection and record-keeping of school fees, discipline of learners with lack of parental involvement, handling of destructive behaviors of students in schools which inevitably results in added stressors. Not all the teachers have coping mechanisms in place. Sadly, many of the stress management techniques on offer simply aren't practical in a school setting. The main issue faced by teachers is workload and the work will still be there even after the so called stress management techniques used by the school management of private schools, such as conducting some yoga classes for teachers or arranging talks by experts etc. Stress management tends to treat the symptoms of stress rather than identifying and tackling its causes. In case of public schools the workload and teachers pay both are as per the government rules so there are hardly any reasons for teacher facing workplace stress. More practical perhaps are what are called 'daily uplifts', those little treats we give ourselves at points during the day; everything from a five minute sit-down with a cup of tea to a 10 minute walk at lunchtime and this is what can help the teachers to tackle daily workplace stress, but in some of the private school teachers are not allowed to sit in the staffroom in the recess, they are given duties to look at the discipline issues of students. It’s high time the management of private schools realize the importance of a teacher in improving whole school performance and making it a high achieving school.
Swaleha Sindhi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the M.S.University of Baroda, Email:[email protected]
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