Occupational Stress and Coping Strategies among Non-tenure Lecturers in a Malaysian Public University

Abstract

Of late, the non-tenure lecturers’ (NTL) employment is taken to meet the shortage of English language lecturers in Malaysian universities. Significant research has investigated the effects of NTLs’ appointments on teaching, students, and university performance; however, little scholarly work has focused on the psychological experiences of NTLs. With the job market’s escalating demands, the prevalence of occupational stress has become a matter of great concern for both universities’ administrators and NTLs. The purpose of this case study was to shed light and explore NTLs’ perceptions of occupational stress sources, stress effects, and coping strategies in a Malaysian public university. Purposive sampling was utilized to recruit study participants who met the sampling criteria. Data gleaned from in-depth semi-structured interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Results indicate that stigma and novice status was identified as the main stressor, followed by teaching-related engagements, students’ negative factors, inadequate infrastructure, and non-teaching related engagements. Personal, social, professional, and institutional coping strategies were the coping strategies used to alleviate stress. The findings suggest prospects for institutional intervention by attending to NTLs’ needs to mitigate adverse outcomes for students and universities by providing comprehensive stress training courses.