Stress in Teaching

Dr Jack Dunham, Jack Dunham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9781138472112
• eBook ISBN: 9781134920181
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The stress involved in a career in teaching has increased considerably in recent years. In England and Wales the implementation of the Education Reform Act has led to a whole range of organisational and curricular changes to add to the existing pressures of discipline problems, poor working conditions and low pay. Anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties and even physical illness are just some of the symptoms that result. This established guide, now wholly updated for teachers and managers in the 1990s, shows how to recognize the signs of stress and how to develop strategies to control it. Its practical advice, field-tested in numberous workshops for teachers and heads, should help scholls to reduce pressures on their staff by the development of satisfactory whole-school policies and teachers to be more effective in the management of their own stress levels.

1
INTRODUCTION

The first step in tackling stress is to acknowledge its existence in teaching. Acceptance is difficult for people who associate stress with personal weakness and professional incompetence. For them, admitting to classroom difficulties is tantamount to admitting that they are bad teachers. They are afraid to disclose professional problems to colleagues who would regard them as signs of failure. They are unwilling to ask for help because that action would be seen as a form of weakness. Some of these barriers to stress reduction were identified by a teacher in a report sent to me in preparation for a staff conference: ‘Stress is caused because I am unable to ask for extra support because if I did, I would be assessed as as weak teacher by the rest of the staff.’

The second step is to be clear about what the term ‘stress’ means, because several definitions are used by teachers. This issue of meaning is important because we need to know which definition teachers are using when they accept or deny the existence of stress.

There are three major approaches to understanding the nature of stress in teaching. The first approach looks at the pressure exerted on teachers in schools. A parallel is drawn with Hooke’s Law of Electricity, the main elements of which are that of ‘stress’ (the load or demand which is placed on metal) and that of ‘strain’ (the deformation that results). The law states that if the strain produced by a given stress falls within the ‘elastic limit’ of the material, then when the stress is removed the material will simply return to its original condition. If, however, the strain passes beyond the ‘elastic limit’, then some permanent damage will result. This model suggests that people, too, have their limits. Up to a point, stress can be tolerated, but when it becomes intolerable, damage may result, either psychological or physiological, or both. From this perspective stress ‘is a set of causes, not a set of symptoms’ (Symonds 1947:1). This is still a widely held view and it is the basis of the argument that only certain groups of teachers, for example probationers, need programmes of guidance and support. This engineering model, equating external pressures with stress, can be criticized on a number of grounds. There are wide individual differences among teachers in their reactions to their first year of service, reorganization, redeployment or other pressures. Some of them report stimulation rather than stress during these experiences. The extent to which the work demands made upon a teacher result in stress depends on a number of factors including pressures from sources external to teaching: personality and previous experience of similar demands.

The second approach to understanding stress is concerned with the forms taken by teachers’ reactions to these pressures. These may consist of emotional and bodily manifestations such as headaches, muscular tension and stomach ailments. From this perspective stress is defined as ‘an unpleasant emotional state (e.g. tension, frustration, anxiety, emotional exhaustion)’ (Kyriacou 1981:193). This view defines the concept of stress in terms of the degree to which a person is experiencing persistent and high levels of anxiety or tension, identified in symptoms such as ‘agitated’, ‘depressed’, ‘irritable’, ‘weepy’, ‘like a wet rag’, ‘can’t concentrate’, ‘very tense’ and ‘can’t switch off’. This perspective is illustrated in a letter I received from a member of one of my Further Professional Studies courses in Bristol University’s School of Education:

I should like to ask you a few questions concerning a friend of mine who has been teaching in a comprehensive school for four years. At the same time she has had fairly massive domestic problems. Since the second week of term she has been on sick leave. Her symptoms are persistent nausea, bouts of panic with very rapid heartbeats, sleeplessness, terrible feelings of panic and a tingling sensation in her limbs. Her doctor is treating her for stress but what I really wanted to ask you was:

1. Are these typical symptoms of stress?
2. How long do they take to be cured?
3. Does the cure involve leaving the teaching profession?
4. Are the symptoms, if cured for the moment, likely to recur?

These questions bring out the strong medical orientation of this approach to understanding stress which is one of its major weaknesses. There are important manifestations which are not emotional or psychosomatic and so tend to be ignored by people using this definition. A head of department expressed one difficulty during an in-service training course: ‘The awareness of stress is an important issue. Many people seem unable to recognize the signs in themselves or feel that they are letting themselves down if they admit to stress.’

One significant type of problem which is frequently not defined as stress-related is ineffectiveness in the performance of one’s role in school. The experience of becoming ineffective is often accompanied by a major loss of confidence and is particularly worrying to staff who have been competent and confident for a number of years. Some of the consequences of a reduction in effort and competence because of an increase in stress were set out very clearly by a head of department in a preparatory report to me for a stress reduction workshop:

I tried hard to forget school during the vacation and I refused for the first time in ten years to spend time in the classroom before the holiday was over. I did not finish my aims and objectives for which the head had been waiting. I tried to accept that my time and talent were limited but I find it very hard. I have used more available and less original material in my lessons. For the first time I have re-issued notes from previous years.

The third approach to explaining stress is concerned with both pressures and reactions and also with the coping resources which teachers use as they attempt to cope with their difficulties. Stress from this perspective means a significant excess of pressures over coping resources. This interactionist approach emphasizes the importance of identifying the demands which teachers perceive and experience as stressful and the behaviour they use to tackle these demands. Coping behaviour has been defined by Mechanic (1967) as the application of a person’s acquired skills, techniques and knowledge and he has argued that, in attempting to understand stress, more attention should be given to problem-solving and coping behaviour.

This view proposes that the extent to which a teacher experiences stress in any situation in school depends upon a number of factors which include: appraisal of demands and his or her strategies to deal with them; anticipation of likely future demanding experiences and his or her state of readiness to tackle them; the extent of the preparation and rehearsal of the skills necessary for the teacher to handle work pressures effectively.

I use the interactionist model as the basis of my in-service training in stress reduction skills and it will be used as the framework for this book. My definition of stress is: a process of behavioural, emotional, mental, and physical reactions caused by prolonged, increasing or new pressures which are significantly greater than coping resources. The plan of the book follows the three parts of the definition (pressures, reactions and coping resources): Chapters 2, 3 (the additional chapter), 4, 5, and 6 are concerned with helping teachers in primary and secondary schools to become more aware of the pressures which are experienced by their colleagues so that they can be encouraged to identify their own pressures. Chapter 7 is related to the demands on headteachers and deputy heads and chapter 8 discusses the heavy loads experienced by heads of departments, heads of houses and year heads; chapter 9 reports the stress reactions of all staff and chapter 10 records the different strategies which staff use as they tackle their pressures and reactions. In chapters 11 and 12 I offer a number of recommendations for strengthening coping resources.

These chapters use information which has been reported by staff in my action research projects in courses and conferences in schools, colleges, teachers’ centres and universities. The research is an integral part of the awareness and skills training. Before a course or conference begins, I ask for information about the members’ pressures, reactions, resources and recommendations for the reduction of stress. This is summarized and reported back when I participate in the session. If it is a school-based staff conference, I visit the school and interview some of the staff before the conference, and then while it is in progress I report back my information and also suggest a framework for a stressreduction programme for staff. Reporting back is an essential test for the accuracy of my perception of how staff are dealing with the sources of stress in school. A follow-up session to review the effectiveness of the stress-reduction programme after about six months is gradually becoming more accepted by teachers as a necessary part of my work.

For the first edition in 1984 I collected written and oral information from about 1,350 teachers, including heads, deputies, heads of departments and house and year heads, and from another 4,190 staff between then and the middle of 1991. Much of it is presented in this book, which I see as another form of feed-back to be tested for its accuracy by teachers individually and in groups. A considerable amount of information is presented in the words of the teachers themselves so that their collegues can share these experiences of stress, learn from their attempts to reduce it and, perhaps most importantly, end their feelings of suffering from stress in isolation. In this book, as in my in-service training, I see myself as a facilitator and not as an ‘expert’ and I offer it with thanks to all my respondents who have helped me so much personally and professionally.

2
PROBLEMS CAUSED BY ORGANIZATIONAL AND CURRICULAR CHANGES BEFORE THE REFORM ACT 1988

In this chapter there is an investigation of the major changes teachers experienced in the decade before the Reform Act and which altered their schools and the work they did in the classrooms. These included the demands of reorganization and the development of schemes of pastoral care for pupils with personal and family problems. Staff were also under pressure to use new and more rigorous methods for appraisal of their work and to maintain high professional standards in the face of reduced financial support in schools.

For the majority of teachers, reorganization originally meant the organizational and curricular changes which were required to implement their LEA’s policy for comprehensive education. This earlier reorganization was associated with growth and was very different from contemporary developments, which are usually based on contraction. For some teachers the establishment of comprehensive schools had a very positive meaning. They felt, as one of the teachers expressed it to me: ‘A sense of relief and a sense of not being bottled up, even of liberation’. These teachers perceived new opportunities for fresh patterns of teaching; new relationships; new patterns of involvement in worthwhile developments; fresh opportunities for personal and professional growth and better prospects for promotion. But for some of their colleagues the process of moving from a secondary modern or grammar school into a comprehensive school meant changes which seemed to have four major aspects:

1. leaving the security of a familiar environment in the previous school;
2. working in larger and more complex schools;
3. teaching pupils who had a much wider range of abilities, behaviour and attitudes;
4. adapting to major organizational and curricular changes.

Some of these changes were perceived before reorganization as threats and viewed with apprehension. During my discussions with teachers about the adjustments they would have to make to achieve a successful transition to the comprehensive systems in their LEA, a number of worries were expressed. Staff were concerned about the differences between their present pupils and those in the new school. They were apprehensive about the problems of discipline they might encounter.

They thought that they would have to modify their own patterns of behaviour to which they had become accustomed over a number of years. These familiar routines and rituals had given them security because there were so few unexpected demands. Unfortunately the limitations of a narrow range of school experience made them vulnerable to the uprooting aspect of reorganization. The significance of this kind of vulnerability can be seen in the experience of a teacher who had been working in a new purpose-built comprehensive school for about a year. She told me that she was experiencing much less job satisfaction in her present school than in the small country grammar school which had been her only post and in which she had worked for ten years. Reorganization had brought several losses: she and her colleagues were required to leave the old grammar school buildings and to move into new buildings on a new site. She also left behind her headmaster who chose the time of reorganization to retire. He had ruled the school as a benevolent and autocratic father-figure for over twenty years. The man appointed to take his place seemed inadequate to her because he was not satisfying her needs for recognition and support. She said she was depressed. She seemed to be suffering from grief for the loss of the grammar school and of the kind of working life it had meant for her.

But reorganization meant more than trying to come to terms with personal losses. It was necessary for staff to attempt to cope with the differences in the new school. For many teachers this meant working in a much larger school and for them this was one of the most severe demands they encountered. The process of adaptation to a larger school has been perceptively analysed by the head of an Avon secondary school (Hinton 1974:17): ‘Most of us are simply unused to very large schools. We went to smaller schools; we taught in smaller schools. It is a slow and uneasy process adjusting to a different kind of institution.’

One of the important differences he identified was the difficulty of developing a sense of belonging to a big organization. In the largest schools there was a considerable risk that the organization would be perceived as so impersonal and so fragmented that a sense of common purpose would be very difficult to achieve. In these circumstances it became difficult to find points of identification with staff and pupils. For teachers who had served in small schools where they felt the satisfaction of shared aims, the demands involved in these changes presented severe problems. These large schools were also much more complex organizations which included split-site working, complicated disciplinary procedures, impersonal communication systems instead of the face-to-face contact of previous schools and new administrative structures which included executive teams, policy and planning committees and staff working parties.

Teachers going into comprehensive schools were also required to adjust to a different intake of pupils with a much wider range of behaviour, abilities and attitudes. A minority of these pupils had learning, disciplinary and emotional problems which were outside the training and experience of their teachers. Some long-serving members of staff with the limited experience which made them vulnerable to change had a demoralizing awareness of incompetence and loss of confidence for the first time for many years. They were surprised and occasionally shocked at the behaviour and language of their pupils. One teacher reported: ‘It is not the physical aspects which cause difficulty, as these are not too extreme, so much as the psychological battering one receives to one’s ego; for example one’s requests being ignored and the verbal abuse.’

These teachers were also disturbed by the intensity of their own emotional reactions in classroom, corridor and staff-room. Their previous teaching had not aroused their emotions so strongly: they had simulated anger for disciplinary purposes—now they were really angry; they believed that teaching was like playing a dramatic role on the stage— now their own attitudes, values and skills were being tested to the full.

The demands made on the staff were compounded in a number of schools by major organizational and curricular changes. These pressures have been clearly identified by the head of the Avon secondary school I quoted earlier in this chapter:

When schools go comprehensive teachers are thrust into a variety of quite unfamiliar teaching and pastoral situations. They have to cope with children of both sexes, all ages and abilities, with a plethora of new methods and curricula and with changing attitudes and standards which often seem to devalue skills and philosophies in which they have a heavy emotional investment. They have to adjust to a large number of new colleagues in the immediate aftermath of the anxiety and disturbance which reorganization inevitably brings.

The possible sources of stress which the head has identified were not staggered to give teachers the opportunity of adjusting to one major change before having to cope with the next one. In the schools where all the problems associated with secondary school reorganization were experienced by staff almost simultaneously, resistance to present and further changes became a self-protective strategy. It was clearly expressed in a staff report which was discussed at a secondary-school staff-development conference in which I participated:

We felt that when this school was opened we were thrown into far too much change. There were too many ideas that we were trying to operate all at the same time and this gave us a great deal of insecurity. We lacked stability. We had far too many things that we co...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES
• TABLES
• PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
• ABBREVIATIONS
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. PROBLEMS CAUSED BY ORGANIZATIONAL AND CURRICULAR CHANGES BEFORE THE REFORM ACT 1988
• 3. THE EFFECTS OF THE REFORM ACT 1988 ON TEACHERS’ ROLES
• 4. PROBLEMS OF ROLE CONFLICT AND ROLE AMBIGUITY
• 5. PRESSURES OF CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOUR
• 6. PROBLEMS CAUSED BY DIFFICULT WORKING CONDITIONS
• 7. PRESSURES ON THE SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM
• 8. PRESSURES ON MIDDLE MANAGEMENT
• 9. IDENTIFICATION OF STRESS REACTIONS
• 10. TEACHERS’ COPING RESOURCES
• 11. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STRENGTHENING PERSONAL AND INTERPERSONAL RESOURCES
• 12. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STRENGTHENING ORGANIZATIONAL RESOURCES
• APPENDIX: TEACHERS’ REACTIONS TO INDUSTRIAL ACTION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY