Abstract
The article deals with the occupational stress strategies of education support specialists. Teachers are expected not only to work with students in the classroom but also to perform their duties as an administrator, to rally various resources for meeting the needs of the students and their parents as well as other community members; also to be an innovator, advisor and mediator etc., which creates a high level of (occupational) stress. The main objective of the article is to identify how education specialists’ develop stress coping strategies and to attempt to answer the following problem questions: What is the focus of Lithuanian education specialists’ in stress coping support strategies? What are the links between the stress coping strategies used and socio-demographic characteristics? A quantitative research design was conducted to identify the stress coping strategies used by the specialists working in the education system. (N= 478). Occupational stress experienced by education specialists becomes a serious test not only to the physical and mental health of the professional and his / her family, the potential loss of working capacity and also to the quality of work of the educational institution and the internal culture of the organisation.
Highlights
Stress is a complex phenomenon to research and analyse
The results demonstrated that there was a statistically significant relationship between the use of the emotional coping strategy and the sources of stress in different groups of education specialists, especially observing the synergistic effect of various possible sources of stress
Occupational stress experienced by education specialists becomes a serious test, of physical and mental health of the very professional and his / her family and loss of working capacity, and of the quality of work of the educational institution and the internal culture of the organization
Summary
Stress is a complex phenomenon to research and analyse. It is difficult to define due to the diversity of attitudes, manifestations of stress, perception and consequences of stress and its impact for each individual (Austin, Shah, & Muncer, 2005). A review of scientific research resulted in the identification of several main theoretical attitudes that are characteristic in analysing stress and its coping possibilities. One of these is the trait theory, mostly focusing on stress coping as a product of personality behaviour in various life situations (Smith, 2012). In this systematic theory, stress is related to physiological reactions. There is an abundance of international studies based on different paradigms, these are united by the fact that they often disclose high levels of stress experienced by education specialists (specialists of various pedagogical professions) (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2015) and the symptoms of burnout (Johnson & Birkeland, 2003; Neves de Jesus & Lens, 2005)
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