Occupational Stress and Wellbeing among Special Educators

Abstract

In special education system, teachers face stress on a regular basis, and it is one of the reasons for the shortage of teachers in this field. The level of difficulty and fatigue for special educators is more than for the mainstream schoolteachers. Depression or burnout was one of the reasons for special educators to leave the teaching profession. The well-being of special educators is of significance. Teachers’ wellness has been related not only to the wellbeing of students, but also to school’s stability and quality of teaching with student achievement playing an important role. It is important to check the stressors and wellbeing faced by the primary caregivers, which in such situation are the special educators. The current research looks at special educators’ occupational stress and well-being. The aim of this research is to investigate the relation between occupational stress and wellbeing among special educators. The objective is to discover a statistically significant relationship between the variables. A total of 105 special educators from different institutions were included in the study. The administration is done using the P.G.I. well-being scale by Verma and Verma (1989) and the teacher’s occupational stress scale by Sajid Jamal and Abdul Raheem (2012). Pearson’s correlation coefficient revealed a weak negative association between occupational stress and wellbeing among special educators, implying that those with higher levels of occupational stress had lower levels of wellbeing.