Teacher stress is one of the major areas of attention within education. While great efforts have been made to understand the nature of stress in teaching and its most important sources, still there are many things to be done. These things involve developing strategies and specific techniques for reducing levels of stress in schools. There is an attempt in this essay to understand the notion of ‘teacher stress’ and the way it has increased through the years, especially by teaching young children with emotional and behavioural differences.

One of the main problems is on defining teacher’s stress in the first place. Throughout this essay I will use Kyriacous definition of teacher stress, which:

“refers to the experience by teachers of unpleasant emotions such as anger, tension, frustration, anxiety, depression and nervousness resulting from aspects of their work as teachers” (Kyriacou, 1989).

In recent years however, many teachers have talked about ‘teacher burnout’. This refers to:

“A state of mental, emotional and attitudinal exhaustion in teachers which results from a prolonged experience of stess” (Dunham, 1992).

In any case teacher’s stress is a delibitating problem that teachers have to deal with, as on the one hand it can precipitate both mental and physical illnesses and on the other hand has deleterious effects on their job performance and the work that do with children.

What causes teachers’ stress

1. Large class sizes, especially when they involve teaching low ability pupils in mixed ability classes
2. Lack of material sources or the excessive amounts of marking and preparation.
3. Poor staff communication
4. No co-operation with their peers
5. Weak departmental management
6. School policy problems
7. Anxious, unsupportive or aggressive parents
8. Unrealistic expectations
9. Bitterness about a lack of recognition or promotion
10. Teacher’s persistence to improve all students!!
11. Teacher’s fear of being incompetent
12. Teachers fear of failure
13. Teaching disruptive children

References

Dunham, J.(1992)Stress in Teaching, London:Routledge.

Kyriacou (1989) Teaching and Stress, Philadelphia: Open University Press