Stress Levels of Teachers...

November and January
Volume 7 Issue 2 Spring 2009
Posted On Mon, Apr 27 2009 10:53:22
Authors: Robert Moody , James Barrett

Teaching today’s young people is not only arduous work, but can be dangerously stressful. Anxiety due to school reform efforts, minimal administrative support, poor working circumstances, lack of involvement in school decision making, the encumbrance of paperwork, and lack of resources have all been identified as factors that can cause stress among educators (Hammond & Onikama, 1997). The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its subsequential mandated standardized assessments, family responsibilities, continuing education, low salaries, and poor working conditions can also create stress.

A certain amount of stress in education is predictable, even constructive. The exhilaration and challenges of educating children will physically cause adrenaline levels associated with stress to increase. However, educators differ radically from one another in the degree to which they are able to identify and manage stress. Stress is the physiological and emotional reaction to psychological events. Any event triggering the formerly life-saving, ancient "fight or flight" response is a stressor. Unrelieved, the cumulative, physical strain generated by psychological stress can harm the body. Stress is a consistent, exaggerated, and overwhelming sense of urgency, often coupled with frustration. The dichotomy of stress as a motivator or negative force in school contributes significantly to the emergent shortage of qualified school administrators and teachers (Goodwin, Cunningham, & Childress, 2003). According to Botwinik (2007), it is easy for an educator to become overstressed. Education and stress has seemingly now become one common bond in American society (Kiser, 2007).
To enhance educators’ awareness of stress and activities designed to lower stress; we conducted a full-day seminar with six explicit goals.
1) Presenting research on stress and its effects on the human body and job performance;
2) Replaying a video produced in 2007, entitled, “How Stressed is Your School?";
3) Providing experiential activities that would increase participants’ knowledge of stress and stress coping skills;
4) Conducting a group administered questionnaire during the seminar with a follow-up mail-back survey in January;
5) Giving the participants instructions to write a reflective summary detailing what was learned and actions to be taken as a result of attending the seminar; and
6) Collecting data from the surveys and reflections in order to evaluate its effect on educator stress with recommendations for future study.
The current study presents the structure and outcomes of the seminar. Specifically, we present the activities of the seminar, the data collected, the outcomes of the surveys and reflective summaries, and recommendations for future study.

METHODS

Literature Review
To review the available literature regarding school administrator and teacher stress, we searched the following databases: the Wilson OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition; Worldcat, Education: A SAGE Full-Text Collection, Education Full Text, Educator’s Reference Complete, Emerald Fulltext, ERIC, Academic Search Elite, EBSCO Collection, JSTOR, Dissertation Abstracts, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, Academic Search Elite, Electronic Collections Online, and PsycARTICLES. We reviewed articles dated from 1933 to 2009 using the following search terms: stress, teacher stress, administrator stress, school stress, school-related stress, and school administrator and teacher stress. While we found an overabundance of information on stress, workplace stress, job-related stress, teacher stress, administrator stress, school-related stress, and student stress, we did not find a single article that compared the different levels of stress between school administrators and teachers. Through this paper, we are attempting to fill this void.

What is Stress?
In(1933)Hicks conducted a study on the mental health of teachers and found that 17% of 600 teachers were generally nervous. In(1936)Peck found that 37% of the teachers he studied had nervous symptoms. Canadian researcher, Hans Selye (1956), first pioneered the theory of stress as a non-specific response of the body to any demand made on it to adapt. Some stress is seen as being essential to promote growth; indeed, it can be "the spice of life" (Selye, 1974). Stress, according to Selye, can be either harmful or beneficial. He used the terms distress and eustress to distinguish between two types of stress respectively. Another way to look at stress is to consider it a demand made upon the adaptive capacities of the mind and body. If these capacities can manage the pressure and benefit from the stimulation involved, then stress is appreciated and beneficial. If individuals cannot and find the demand debilitating, then stress is unwelcome and unhelpful (Fontana, 1989). Although there is no single universally accepted definition of stress, Selye believed that stress is a perception, caused by being conscientious and hard work.

Educators and Stress
Educator stress is defined by Kyriacou (1987) as “the experience by a teacher of unpleasant emotions, such as tension, frustration, anxiety, anger, and depression, resulting from aspects of work as a teacher” (p. 146). Educators can be categorized into three groups depending on the way they manage stress (Mcgee-Cooper & Trammell, 1990). The first group comprises those who leave education because they are unwilling to face the pressures of the job. The second group consists of educators who experience a high level of stress but are able to carry on as educators while waiting eagerly for school vacations or retirement. The third group is progressive and well-developed educators who, though stressed, are still capable of handling stress. In-service workshops, seminars, or conferences could help educators manage their stress. Smaller, rural school district budgets often are not be able to afford such opportunities at the district level, causing educators to seek help on their own.

Kings Langley Stress Study of Work Related Stress
The staff at Kings Langley Secondary School, near Watford, England volunteered to take part in a world-first scientific investigation into work related stress among staff for Teachers TV. Hermione Cockburn and a team of scientific experts descended on their school for a week to monitor and evaluate the stress levels of the workforce attempting to answer the question; how stressed is their school? This video focused on the science of stress, looking at DNA testing, pedometers, and a multi-million dollar vest that allowed scientists to monitor the educators’ vital signs in real time. Stress experts Dr. Mark Hamer and Professor Terry Looker joined Hermione. Together, they watched the school staff at work to see how their bodies respond to the demands of their jobs (Cockburn, 2007).

Holmes-Rahe Scale
In 1967, the Holmes-Rahe Scale (HR) was created to measure stress in our lives. The scale shows forty-three life events that produce stress. Units of stress are assigned to each of the life events. The units range from a high of 100 for the death of a spouse to 11 for minor violations of the law (Hanson, 1994). The survey was developed through the examination of 5,000 medical records linking stress to illness. The survey reliability of +0.118 was established in 1970 through a study of 2500 sailors (Wikipedia, 2009).

Hanson Strong/Weak Choice Scales
The Hanson Strong Choices (HSC) and Hanson Weak Choices (HWC) scales each contain ten items. The first item on each scale is related to family genetics which the individual has no control. The remaining nine items on each scale are within the power of the individual to accept or reject through their life style. An example of an item on the weak choices scale is eating foods with the wrong calories, low in fiber, with a disproportionate balance of fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals contributing to individual stress. The related item on the strong choices scale is eating foods high in fiber with a proper balance of fats, proteins, sufficient vitamins, and minerals, which can help, alleviate stress. Each individual has the opportunity to control his/her diet either exacerbating or reducing stress levels.

Experiential Learning
Experiential learning can be generally defined as the process by which a learner creates meaning from direct experience (Luckner & Nadler, 2002). Experiential or action-oriented activities assist the development of cooperative skills, trust, pride in one self, and feelings of achievement. Experiential learning is a student-centered appro
Stress Levels of School Administrators and Teachers in November and January » Academic Leadership Journal