Stress management for school personnel: Stress-inoculation training and exercise

This study evaluated the effectiveness of Stress-Inoculation Training (SIT) with and without an exercise component and a Minimal exercise treatment (MIN) on trait anxiety, teacher stress, and coping strategies among 66 school personnel. The findings indicate that the 8-week SIT with an exercise component was more effective than MIN in reducing anxiety and teacher stress. Both groups significantly decreased emotionfocused coping and increased preventive coping; however, problem-focused coping did not change. SIT without an exercise component did not significantly affect anxiety, stress, or coping strategies; however, there is some evidence that this was due to the cyclical nature of stress in the schools. Changes in teacher stress and coping strategies occurred mainly for those who were below the median of the sample on physical fitness and anxiety prior to beginning the program. Implications of these findings for school-based stress management programs are discussed.     

Motivational orientations,views about the purpose of education,and intellectual styles

College students' motivational orientations toward learning and their views concerning the purpose of education were examined in relation to various intellectual styles. Task orientation (wherein one's goal is to increase understanding or mastery) was found to be positively associated with Tolerance for Ambiguity, Thoughtfulness, and Open-Mindedness. Ego orientation (wherein one's goal is to outperform others) was negatively associated with Tolerance for Ambiguity, Thoughtfulness, Complexity, and Individualism. Moreover, the views that school's purpose should be to promote understanding and achievement motivation tended to be positively associated with these traits, but the view that school should promote one's wealth and status was not associated with these traits.     

Improving Performance Without Training: A Three Step Approach

Condition 1 showed that employees recorded high percentages of completed tasks; and task performance was shown to slightly improve. At that point in the project, recording accuracy was at it's highest level. Condition 2 illustrated a continuance of high employee records of completed tasks but also showed that actual task performance considerably increased so that there was greater self-recording accuracy. Then, during Condition 3, actual task performance increased more so that it even more closely reflected self-recorded measures. Each of the steps discussed thus far could be sufficient individually to facilitate accurate self-recording and task performance gains, although each appeared to have gained additional strength by being collectively applied. The cost of the present organizational intervention was very low. The costs included material duplication costs and approximately 30 minutes of management time per day. Management time was used to make concession observations (management records), compute performance data, and provide feedback to the employee. Employees worked the same number of hours as in Baseline. Based on this breakdown, the approximate weekly cost of this project was about $30.00. The total cost could be reduced further, perhaps, by monitoring less frequently and reducing the frequency of feedback sessions as employee performance stabilized at higher levels. Thus, the longer this project would run, the less expensive it might become. The steps implemented during this project might easily be applied to other jobs that produce easily observable outputs and could also be applied to other work settings. Future research efforts that would identify cost-effective ways to stimulate and maintain high levels of accurate self-recording might provide today's managers several options that could all yield accurate data for organizational management. Other research efforts centered on specific analyses of participatory standard setting, peer reinforcement, and self-reinforcement for task performance could provide additional insight into the areas of job analysis and employee productivity. Lastly, increased knowledge about the long term effects of self-recording could be gained through future research methods that first established high recording accuracies and task performance levels, then evaluated maintenance procedures for these methods. Implications of successive research studies which clearly show that employee performance can be improved by rewarding performers for accurate self-recording could be profound.