Teacher stress: prevalence, sources, and symptoms.

Abstract

Summary. A questionnaire survey was used to investigate the prevalence, sources, and symptoms of stress among 257 schoolteachers in 16 medium‐sized, mixed comprehensive schools in England. About one‐fifth of the teachers rated being a teacher as either very stressful or extremely stressful. There appeared to be little association between self‐reported teacher stress and the biographical characteristics of the teachers. Sources of stress with relatively high mean stress ratings included ‘pupils’ poor attitudes to work', ‘trying to uphold/maintain values and standards’, and ‘covering lessons for absent teachers’. A principal components analysis of the sources of stress revealed four factors labelled' pupil misbehaviour', ‘poor working conditions’, ‘time pressures’, and ‘poor school ethos’. The most frequent symptoms of stress reported were ‘exhaustion’ and feeling ‘frustrated’. A principal components analysis of the symptoms of stress revealed one factor labelled ‘awareness of stress symptoms' which appeared to be largely defined by reported frequency of feeling ‘very tense’.