Occupational stress and teaching approaches among Chinese academics

The primary objective of this study was to examine the predictive power of occupational stress for teaching approaches. Participants were 246 faculty members from a large university in Guangzhou in the People’s Republic of China, who completed the Approaches to Teaching Inventory, four scales from the Occupational Stress Inventory‐Revised (assessing role overload, role insufficiency, psychological strain, and rational/cognitive coping), and the Self‐rated Ability Scale. Results suggested that after the participants’ self‐rated abilities were controlled for, the combination of role overload and the use of rational/cognitive coping was conducive to the conceptual‐change teaching approach (both intention and strategy), and that role insufficiency negatively predicted the conceptual‐change teaching strategy. Furthermore, together, rational/cognitive coping and psychological strain contributed to an information‐transmission teaching strategy. The implications of these findings for university academics and for university senior managers are discussed.