Dimensions of Occupational Stress in West Indian Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

Summary. Despite a growing body of research on teacher stress and development of stress‐management programmes, studies come almost exclusively from just a few industrialised nations and the applicability of their recommendations for teacher training in developing regions is difficult to ascertain. The present study helps to redress this imbalance, and reports on data from 444 secondary school teachers in Barbados using a 36‐item self‐report instrument. Individual item means indicated that difficulties associated with classroom instructional and management demands were perceived by the majority of teachers to be the most stressful aspects of their work. On the other hand, factor analysis and ANOVA computations revealed that problems associated with time management most clearly differentiated between teachers when compared on the basis of sex, qualifications, and years of experience. Findings are discussed generally with reference to the existing international literature, and more specifically in terms of living and working conditions in the West Indies.

Towards a model for the determinants of occupational stress among schoolteachers

“…in various studies. Although not emerging in the same order or necessarily described in the same terms, factors encompassing sources of stress dealing with pupil behaviour and time demands have been extracted from data obtained from English comprehensive schoolteachers (Kyriacou & Sutcliffe, 1978a), teachers in grades K-12 in the U.S.A. (Clark, 1980), Australian primary and secondary schoolteachers (Laughlin, 1984), West Indian secondary schoolteachers (Payne & Furnham, 1987), Nigerian teachers (Okebukola & Jegede, 1989), and Maltese primary schoolteachers . Typically, items dealing with pupil behaviour cover such aspects as dealing with pupils who continually misbehave and poor work attitudes of pupils whereas the stress factor 'time pressure' is composed of sources of stress like 'covering the syllabus in the time available' and 'lack of time for marking and lesson preparation'.…”

“…Another such factor which has been widely reported is 'poor school ethos' (Kyriacou & Sutcliffe, 1978a;Payne & Furnham, 1987;Okebukola & Jegede, 1989). This factor encompasses aspects like 'inadequate disciplinary policy of school' and 'lack of opportunity to express one's point of view in schooL's decision-making'.…”

A structural model of the dimensions of teacher stress

“…Other models of teacher stress, including the cognitive appraisal model of Lazarus & Folkman (1984), have also been criticised for not paying sufficient attention to affective components (cf. Brown & Ralph, 1992;Worrall & May, 1989}. In attempts to identify the major dimensions of teacher stress, a number of exploratory factor analytic studies have been undertaken (e.g., Borg et al, 1991;Clark, 1980;Dewe, 1986;Kyriacou & Sutcliffe, 1978a;Laughlin, 1984;Manthei & Solman, 1988;Okebukola & Jegede, 1989;Payne & Fumham, 1987). At least four major dimensions of teacher stress have emerged from these various empirical studies.…”

Recension des facteurs associés à l’établissement de relations enfant-éducateur au service du sain développement de l’enfant

“…La vérification de l'effet d'autres sources de stress (par exemple, conditions de travail ; Payne et Furnham, 1987) et de soutien (par exemple, collègues ; relations enfant-éducateur ; Greenglass, Fiksenbaum et Burke, 1996), ainsi que de la dimension positive de la santé psychologique (par exemple, bien-être ; Gilbert, 2009), permettraient également d'avoir un portrait plus précis des facteurs liés à la qualité de la relation enfant-éducateur. La comparaison statistique des résultats en fonction des types de milieux éducatifs (comme une garderie familiale, ou une installation) et un meilleur consensus quant au type d'instruments de mesure de la qualité de la relation enfant-éducateur contribueraient aussi à enrichir ce champ de recherche.…”