Teacher stress over a school year

Abstract

The main aims of the study were (1) to study how teacher stress proceeds as an accumulation/recovery process over one school year and how good a possibility the profession offers for annual recovery from stress; (2) to explore interindividual differences in stress and coping process among teachers; and (3) to study the relationships between teacher stress and urinary excretion of catecholamines during night rest. The subjects of the study were teachers (N =187) of comprehensive and upper secondary schools in five municipalities. The study design was longitudinal: questionnaire data and urine samples were collected from the subjects 17 times during a period of 14 months, from April 1983 to May 1984. The measurements represented both weekends or holidays and workdays. The background variables were based on personnel records data and on a questionnaire the subjects answered in the autumn of 1983. The results indicated that teacher stress had an identifiable cycle within the school year. The possibility for annual recovery from stress was good during the spring term, whereas towards the end of the autumn term recovery stopped and stress accumulated. The effect of Christmas holidays was noticed as it upset the stress accumulation process to some extent. When exploring the stress process over the autumn term more accurately four types of stress processes and three types of coping profiles were found. This means that there were large interindividual differences in stress and coping among the teachers. It seemed that catecholamine excretion during night rest, and especially adrenaline excretion, worked as an index of stress when the subjective stress level was high among the teachers, i.e. at the end of the term or in a group with high stress.