Chapter Seven. Stress and coping of teachers: A quantitative and qualitative analysis

Abstract

This chapter attempts to demonstrate the fruitfulness of the conception of sources of stress and coping in studying work stress. It discusses the common research strategy in the study of work stress, namely, to focus on a specific occupation in order to bring out the bearing of job characteristics and work organization on the stress process. The chapter also attempts to identify and discusses the sources of stress and the coping actions found in one occupational group, namely, teachers. The aim is to get at the general condition that underlies both their sources of stress and their ways of coping, in order to understand the nature of teachers’ work within a broader conception of human adaptation and human action. The psychic and somatic palliative techniques of coping are analytically distinct as required by the principal component analysis. Keywords: coping actions; human adaptation; palliative techniques; work stress