赣州市中小学教师工作压力和职业倦怠状况调查

通过对赣州市18个学校1096名教师的问卷调查及41位教师的访谈发现:赣州市中小学教师工作压力处于中等水平,以社会、学生、教育教学改革方面的压力为主;近四成左右的教师有明显的职业倦怠,主要表现为情绪疲惫和少成就感;人口学变量和职业状态变量对工作压力、职业倦怠水平有影响;工作压力和职业倦怠在最高获奖级别上的差异折射出教师发展阶段中的"高原期";对职业的认同度及其职业能力共同影响着教师的工作压力和职业倦怠。     

中小学教师职业压力、社会支持与职业倦怠关系研究——以安徽省为例

对安徽省395名中小学教师的职业压力、社会支持和职业倦怠进行调查与分析.结果表明:3.5%的教师有严重职业压力,43.8%的教师有轻度职业压力;有轻度、中度和重度职业倦怠的教师比例分别为18.2%,7.8%和2.8%.教师的职业压力、社会支持与职业倦怠3个维度均呈显著负相关.应采取有效措施,减轻教师的职业压力,建立和完善社会支持系统,减少教师的职业倦怠感.     

新课程背景下中小学教师职业压力状况的调查分析

研究目的：考察新课程背景下河北省沧州市中小学教师职业压力的状况,从而为教师心理健康教育和教师管理提供心理学依据。研究方法：采用朱从书等人编制的《中小学教师职业压力问卷》以整群随机取样方式选取沧州市市区和东光县、盐山县公立学校的913名初中和小学教师进行测试,采用SPSS 15.0 for Windows统计软件对数据进行处理与分析。结果：当前沧州市中小学教师的职业压力属中等水平;职业压力的总体状况及其各个维度在性别、教龄、学校层次、学校类型、任教学科、是否班主任等不同方面存在着不同的差异。     

Inter‐professional work and expertise: New roles at the boundaries of schools

The findings discussed here are based on five case studies and a small survey (n = 46) of how secondary schools are responding to demands that they collaborate with other services to intervene to prevent the social exclusion of children and young people. The case studies revealed a new space of action opening up around schools where practices were being shaped by ‘welfare managers’ who were employed by schools and were undertaking responsive work with vulnerable children and young people and the other services who were also supporting them. At the same time heads of year and/or heads of school and form tutors were increasingly focusing on children's achievement in school. The changes in roles and responsibilities were encouraged by workforce remodelling and changes in criteria for teachers’ salaries. However, focusing primarily on the work undertaken by the welfare managers, the article draws on cultural‐historical activity theory analyses of relational agency and distributed expertise to question whether welfare managers can undertake the work required in the new space of action without attention to the development of their core expertise.     

Stress and Job Satisfaction: a study of English primary school teachers

Using a self‐report questionnaire, a picture of the sources of stress and job satisfaction amongst a sample of 267 teachers, drawn from primary schools in the North and Eastern regions of England, is established. Teachers scored the frequency and intensity of 18 items on a stress scale. A principal components analysis was carried out and three factors were identified: professional concerns, pupil behaviour and attitude and professional tasks. The strongest correlations were found between professional concerns and occupational stress. Biographical factors were examined and significant differences were found between men and women, and teachers of different ages and length of teaching experience. Men reported more stress than women on professional tasks and pupil behaviour and attitude. Women scored higher than men on professional concerns. Just over one‐third of teachers were satisfied with their job. When specific facets of job satisfaction were examined, teachers were most satisfied with their professional performance and least satisfied with teaching resources. Stress and job satisfaction were found to be negatively correlated. High reports of occupational stress were related to low levels of job satisfaction. Attention is drawn to the likely significance of including a frequency as well as intensity measure when considering the experience of stress and to the complex nature of job satisfaction.     

民办高职教师职业压力与离职倾向实证研究

以301名民办高职院校教师为被试样本,实证分析了民办高职院校教师职业压力、离职倾向现状。通过层级回归分析法处理数据,得出结论：职业压力对离职倾向存在正向预测作用,职业压力的五个因子学校管理与教师待遇、角色职责、自身发展、学生因素、人际关系对离职倾向具有显著影响。因此,政府和学校应采取有效措施缓解民办高职院校教师职业压力,以提高教师工作满意度,降低离职倾向,稳定教师队伍,促进学校的健康发展。     

Occupational Well‐being among Aging Teachers in Finland

This article presents an examination of occupational well‐being among teachers in Finland who are over 45‐years of age (n = 1012). Occupational well‐being was described by affective (job anxiety and depression, burnout), behavioral (job competence and aspiration) and health (psychosomatic Symptoms and work ability) components. The structure of well‐being turned out to be two‐dimensional, consisting of affect‐health and behavior dimensions. The level of well‐being among aging teachers was quite high, although 36% of the teachers had Problems of well‐being related to both ajfect‐health and behavior. However, according to the work ability index, only 4% of the 45‐49‐year‐old and 12% of the 55‐59‐year‐old teachers were classified as having poor work ability. Of the demographic variables examined (sex, age, subject and teaching level) the most Variation in occupational well‐being was produced by subject and teaching level. The level of well‐being was lowest among vocational subject teachers in vocational schools and highest among Special dass teachers in comprehensive schools. Attention should thus be directed to the work Situation of vocational teachers, in particular.     

The Pupil's Experience of School Organization

The paper is concerned with the development, validation and use of management competencies; the focus is upon the position of heads within the maintained‐schools sector. Issues germane to competencies and their usage are discussed, as are the criteria to be met for competencies to have applicability to the education sector. The generation of management competencies for heads through a national job analysis involving some 255 heads is described. Headteacher management competencies are presented, and practical alternatives for their use discussed. Finally, a working framework is developed of how competencies generated for senior educational positions stand in relation to competencies which are applicable in other occupational sectors.     

Leadership in large and very large primary schools

This paper examines leadership in large primary schools. The paper reports on interviews conducted with heads and deputies in 26 schools with 600+ pupils. The first part of the paper sets out what the heads and deputies said about leading such large schools. Then five themes which emerged from their testimonies are explored. The themes are: context; site management; organisational structures; the role of the deputy head; professional development. The interviews have been used to inform a second stage of the study, which is a large survey of 500 other large and very large schools. The quantitative data are still being analysed at the time of this paper going to press and the findings will be reported later.     

The professional role and identity of teachers in the private and state education sectors

Abstract

This paper compares the professional role and identity of teachers in private and state schools. It brings together theory within the sociology of the professions and approaches influenced by Basil Bernstein. It utilises his work on recontextualisation to identify the nature of teachers’ professional role; and Beck and Young’s (2010) Bernstein-influenced analytical framework to understand changes in these teachers’ professional identity. Drawing on focussed qualitative research the study shows how, within private schools, when cloistered from the Official Recontextualising Field (ORF) an idealized account of teachers’ professional work flourishes. This idealized understanding of occupational professionalism is contingent on the ‘othering’ of the state sector: to do this private-school teachers adopt a deprofessionalization discourse which represents the state teacher as a passive receiver of the ORF. In contrast, state teachers foreground their agency to negotiate competing professional logics which they express through hybrid approaches to professional practice.     

教师职业压力、社会支持和心理健康关系探析——以中小学教师为例

旨在探讨中小学教师职业压力、社会支持和心理健康间的关系,为促进中小学教师心理健康提供心理学依据.采用教师职业压力问卷、社会支持问卷和症状自评量表对625名中小学教师进行调查.结果表明:中小学教师的职业压力主要来自于工作负荷、职业期望和考试压力,在心理健康水平方面,高职业压力的教师要显著低于低职业压力的教师,高社会支持的...     

Teacher Stress Predicts Child Executive Function: Moderation by School Poverty

Research Findings: Recent research has explored relations between classroom quality and child executive function (EF), but little is known about how teachers’ well-being, including stress, relates to child EF—a crucial component of self-regulation. We hypothesized that teacher stress is negatively or curvilinearly related to child EF and classroom quality may be one mechanism explaining this relation. Furthermore, as working with young, low-income children may be particularly stressful, we tested the extent to which the relation between teacher stress and child EF varies by school-level poverty. Two-level hierarchical linear models using a sample of 171 kindergarten children and 33 teachers revealed a marginally significant linear relation between teacher stress and child EF (spring) controlling for baseline child EF (fall); there was no evidence for mediation by classroom quality. School-level poverty moderated the relation between teacher stress and child EF: Children attending low-poverty schools demonstrated smaller gains in EF when their teachers reported higher stress levels. However, in high-poverty schools high levels of teacher stress were not a risk factor for child EF. Practice or Policy: These novel findings are a first step to understanding how teachers’ well-being relates to child EF across schools and have implications for supporting teachers.     

How to cope with stress in special needs education? Stress-inducing dysfunctional cognitions of teacher students: the perspective of professionalisation

The goal of the present study is to identify prospective special education teachers (SETs) who may have difficulties in coping with occupational stresses and burdens. International comparative studies show that SETs have a higher level of stress than their colleagues who work in the general school system. Compared with teachers in regular schools, SETs leave their profession at a higher rate. For this reason, the study focuses on so-called dysfunctional cognitions, which might increase stress in strenuous occupational situations and which have long-term harmful effects on health. The construct of dysfunctional cognitions is supposed to be a basis for developing supportive measures for teacher students with low stress tolerance. In the framework of the present study located in the German educational system, teacher students (N = 333) from the special needs areas, including learning disability, mental disability, emotional/social disorders and sensory disabilities (hearing impairment, or speech or language disorders), are taken into account. A hierarchical cluster analysis and a discriminant analysis were used to identify four different clusters: Cluster 1 shows the lowest attitude level of equally all dysfunctional cognitions. Clusters 2 and 3 are characterised by higher degrees, especially of ‘dependency’, ‘internalisation of failure’ and ‘personal standards (perfectionism)’. The fourth profile indicates the highest degree of the dysfunctional cognitions. Lower levels of dysfunctional cognitions (with the exception of perfectionism) occur together with a higher expectation of self-efficacy. No cluster applies for all teacher students of one specific special needs area. Prospective teachers in the area of mental disability are overrepresented in cluster 3, with a high level of internalisation of failure and dependency. Teacher students in the area of emotional/social disorders belong, to a considerable degree, to the ‘risk’ cluster. The profiles are used to develop measures for those teacher students who may experience difficulties in stressful occupational situations. Therefore, these student teachers need to be closely supported through additional intensive training elements and balanced career counselling.     

Threshold assessment and performance management: modernizing or masculinizing teaching in England?1

The paper reports on aspects of an ESRC project, ‘The impact of Performance Threshold Assessment on teachers' work’ (ESRC R000239286). The paper begins by explaining the nature and technology of Threshold Assessment, and its location nationally within the performance management system recently introduced into schools in England. We review the monitoring procedures adopted for Round 1 of Threshold and draw attention to the limitations of such statistical data as are available. We locate Threshold within recent international developments characterised by managerialism and the culture of performativity that have increasingly come to dominate both the nature of policy‐making and definitions of ‘professionalism’. Drawing on interview material gained from thirteen case studies carried out in primary and secondary schools and in Local Education Authorities, we analyse the ways in which Threshold Assessment carries different significance for women and men teachers, heads and threshold assessors. We conclude that the new policies represent a further step towards the masculinization of education.     

The Roles of the Primary Head in Voluntary Aided and County Schools: A Personal View

In Zimbabwe, there have been some debates on democratisation and decentralisation, which led to the development of policies meant to increase teacher participation in decision-making in schools. However, despite these developments, teacher participation in decision-making in Zimbabwean schools is regarded as insignificant. Teachers work closely with students and have firsthand knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses – they are therefore the most valuable people to develop and implement policies. This study investigated the extent of teacher participation in decision-making in Zimbabwean schools. The study adopted a qualitative/interpretive research methodology and used the case study research design as the operational framework for data gathering. Data was collected through interviews, documentary analysis and observation of two staff meetings per school from five secondary schools in Gweru Education District in Zimbabwe. The population sample comprised five secondary school heads and 20 secondary school teachers. The study established that teachers were insignificantly involved in decision-making despite their eagerness to be involved. Some duties are given to senior teachers or committees even when teachers feel that they should be directly involved. There are times when school heads make unilateral decisions and impose them on teachers for implementation. The study recommends that heads of schools should give their teachers room to come up with ideas and look at all contributions objectively.     

Responding to external accountability in high-performing,high-capacity public secondary schools in Chile

The qualitative study on which this article reports explored how senior leaders, mathematics and Spanish language teachers (N = 72) in four high-performing, high-poverty, public secondary schools in Chile enact performance-based accountability policies related to standardised assessments. These four public schools were selected because prior to when the study was conducted all were part of the Bicentennial Schools Programme led by the Ministry of Education from 2010 to 2014. The aim of the programme was to develop effective secondary schools to serve low-income students. A thematic analysis of data produced through individual and group interviews and observations of departmental meetings shows that the enactment of performance-based accountability involved two dimensions of learning-centred leadership, distributed among senior leaders and department heads. An aim shared by parents, students, teachers and senior leaders was to ensure students' access to, and completion of, studies in higher education. Attaining good scores in national standardised SIMCE tests was key to meeting the vision. Collective trust among all actors and macro level trust in standardised testing served as a resource for strong collaboration to improve instruction and learning as well as teachers' collective efficacy. The discussion focuses on school-level practices and policy-level decisions that create conditions for the effective use of information produced from standardised assessments. A key point supported by our findings is that successful performance in external assessments is resourced by, and fosters, trust formation in schools.     

An examination of US first-year teachers’ risk for occupational stress: associations with professional preparation and occupational health

Previous research has demonstrated associations between teacher stress and occupational burnout, but few studies have attempted to operationalize a central tenet of most stress theories, namely that teachers’ appraisals of their classroom demands vis-à-vis their classroom resources is a central driver of vulnerability to stress. The research is particularly silent on risk for stress among the most vulnerable workers in the education sector – first-year teachers. The current study, utilizing data from the US National Center for Education Statistics Beginning Teachers Longitudinal study, sought to replicate prior research, conducted with more experienced US teachers, demonstrating that perceptions of classroom demands and resources can be used to classify new teachers according to their risk for stress. In an extension to previous analyses, the current study also examined the association between first-year teachers’ risk for stress and professional preparation. Results from this study aligned with previous findings, teachers classified at risk for stress reported more burnout symptoms (d = 1.48) and less classroom control (d = .62). Teacher education characteristics and exposure to first-year support programming were also found to be associated with first-year teachers’ risk for stress classification. Findings have implications for how US teacher education potentially shapes first-year teachers’ appraisal of their working conditions and corresponding risk for stress.     

Occupational stress, negative affectivity and physical health in special and general education teachers in Greece

Teacher stress has attracted considerable attention, yet few studies have focused on special education teachers. This article, by Lambros Lazuras of the South-East European Research Centre (SEERC) in Thessaloniki, reports research designed to explore differences in the stress levels of general and special educators in Greece and provides preliminary evidence for a framework to understand the process of special education teacher stress. A total of 70 teachers from general and special education schools from a large Greek city participated in the study by completing questionnaires. Measures included occupational stress deriving from interpersonal conflict, organisational constraints, workload, work-related negative affectivity and health outcomes. Data analyses allowed for inferences regarding the dynamic interaction among the study variables. Findings appear interesting in terms of advancing current understanding of the relationships between different sources of job stress within the special education teaching context and provide general guidelines for future policies aiming to counter special education teacher stress.     

School leadership during violent conflict: rethinking education for peace in Nepal and beyond

This paper outlines the impact and professional tensions created by the decade-long armed conflict (1996–2006) on school leadership in Nepal. Drawing on qualitative interviews and discussions with school heads and teachers (n?=?92), the study reveals that the onerous pressure of pupils’ safety during crisis ultimately fell upon teachers and school leaders who faced direct violence on school grounds and communities they lived in. It was found that school heads were traumatised by consistent pressures, as manifested in the form of financial extortion, physical threats and abductions by the Maoists while the security forces frequently harassed them as Maoist sympathisers or confederates. Maintaining relational equilibrium with warring parties in order to ensure their personal and school survival was a traumatic experience. Despite the enormity of effects on education during conflict, the post-conflict educational debates largely undermine the voice of those who were at the frontlines during crisis. These findings provide useful insights into the ‘experiential dimension’ of civil conflict at schools in conflict zones and implications for educational programming.     

Classroom Management and Socioemotional Functioning of Burmese Refugee Students in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Access to Malaysian government schools is prohibited for refugee children, and hidden refugee schools only reach a minority of Burmese students in Malaysia. This study used a participatory culture-specific consultation (PCSC) approach to examine the perspectives of Burmese refugee teachers on Burmese refugee student socioemotional issues and classroom management using interviews, observations, a preliminary refugee teacher focus group (N = 10: 4 men, 6 women; M age = 26 years), and a primary focus group with refugee teachers who were Burmese refugees (N = 9: 6 men, 3 women; M age = 30 years). First, themes suggested that societal pressures have an effect on the classroom environment. Second, refugee student behavior and emotions ranged from externalizing to internalizing. Third, refugee teachers relied on traditional Burmese methods for managing serious misbehavior. Fourth, with mild misbehaviors, teachers employed more “modern,” student-centered methods. Results inform culture-specific consultation designed to meet refugee education needs.