Analysis of Student-Related Social Stressors among School Teachers

Abstract

Teachers who have day-to-day relations with students are exposed to mistreatment by students; therefore, they are daily exposed to social stress, which affects their moods. The purpose of the research was to identify the most perceived student-related social stressors (SSS) contributing to the social stress of school teachers in elementary and high schools. Moreover, to explore their relationship to the positive and negative teachers' affect. An online survey was employed for data collection by using publicly available addresses of elementary and high schools in Slovenia. The results show that the most often perceived SSS are disliked students and disproportionate student expectations in both elementary and high schools; a statistically significant relationship between SSS and teachers' affect was found. The principals of elementary and high schools should pay attention to maximizing teachers' competencies to improve their classroom management and enable the teachers to learn about cognitive strategies for moderating mood effects on judgements about social events.