Booney Vance, Susan Miller, Sam Humphreys, and Francine Reynolds

There is growing concern among educators about teachers' mental health. Job-related stress is an important factor in teachers' motivation and retention. Teaching once was considered a rather routine job; however, within the last decade it has become an increasingly complex profession for regular as well as special education teachers (Firnian & Blanton, 1987). Issues such as litigation, liability, accountability, tenure, unions, along with increasingly diverse responsibilities and fast changing ideas have made teaching more stressful. In fact, Duke (1984) estimated that as many as 20 percent of all new teachers leave education during the first few years.

The Teacher Education Division (1982) of the Council for Exceptional Children indicated that as many as 30,000 special education teachers leave the classroom annually. There are many definitions of stress, and each researcher defines stress differently, according to Holt, Fine, and Tollefson (1987). In addition, stress can be positive or negative, and whether an event is perceived as stressful is highly individual.

Research (Kobasa, 1982a, b, 1984; Fimian & Santoro, 1983) has indicated that continued stress can drastically lower job satisfaction and performance and can also damage the individual's personal life. The term "burnout" is often used to describe the effects of continual stress. Logically, a teacher's mental health can be expected to affect classroom performance and interactions with pupils and others, as well as whether the teacher continues in teaching. Other variables associated with teacher stress and burnout are role problems, loss of control, isolation, dissatisfaction with rate of pay, role overload, role ambiguity and lack of administrative support (Fimian, 1986).

Numerous teacher groups have been studied to investigate occupational stress: group-home staff (Thompson, 1980); teachers of emotionally disturbed children (Lawrence & McKinnon, 1982); teachers of general special education and mentally retarded pupils (McIntyre, 1982; Fimian & Santoro, 1983); teachers in a laboratory school (Vance, Nutter, & Humphreys, 1988). Regular education samples also have been studied to identify the relationship among burnout, role conflict, and ambiguity levels in teachers (Anderson, 1980; Weiskopf, 1980).

The literature is clear that there is no single source of teacher stress, but usually stress is a combination of factors or problems. Various researchers have found that teacher stress/burnout is related to factors such as class size, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, lack of accomplishment in the job, tedium, and role strain (Maslach & Jackson, 1981).

Although there are many descriptions of the problems faced by various groups of teachers, little is known about whether similar problems are encountered by teachers employed in a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. The intent of this study was to identify the strongest and most frequently occurring sources and manifestations of stress for a sample of teachers working on an Indian Reservation, as measured by the Teacher Stress Inventory (Fimian, 1988).

Instrumentation. The Teacher Stress Inventory, comprised of 49 items (Fimian, 1988) was administered to each teacher. The time to distribute, complete, and gather the instrument was approximately 20 minutes. According to Fimian (1986), the Teacher Stress Inventory is a valid and reliable measure of six factors of stress for school teachers: (a) Personal/Professional Stressors, (b) Professional Distress, (c) Discipline and Motivation, (d) Emotional Manifestation, (e) Biobehavioral Manifestations and (f) Physiological-Fatigue Manifestations. Each teacher rated his/her stress on a five-point Likert-type scale (one = no strength, not noticeable; five = major strength, extremely noticeable) for each of the 49 items. Reliabilities for the Teacher Stress Inventory range from .89 to .95 for teachers (Fimian, 1985, 1986; Zacherman, 1984).

Data Analysis. The data were analyzed using the new statistical package for social sciences (Hull & Nie, 1981). Specifically, a completely randomized one-way analysis of variance, treatment by groups was used to analyze the data. The Scheffe procedure was used for posteriori analysis. The level of significance difference was set at p < .05 to overcome the alpha effect because of the sample size. The use of the Scheffe method presents a kind of protection level; since there are no differences among the three means the probability of finding any significant difference at all will be no larger than .05 level (Scheffe, 1959).

A number of results were evident and are reported in terms of percentages and rankings. The respondents indicated that 90 percent (27) of them received peer support during times of stress with 10 percent indicating very little peer support. Forty-three percent, or 13 of the teachers, indicated that they received very little administrative support while 57 percent (17) indicated that they received a lot of administrative support. In terms of being satisfied with this job, 40 percent, or 12 teachers, reported they were very satisfied, 50 percent, or 15, only moderately satisfied, and 10 percent, or three, of the teachers indicated very little satisfaction with their current position. The teachers indicated that 23 percent, or seven, experienced very little job stress, 70 percent, or 21, experienced a moderate degree of job stress and seven percent, or two, experienced a high degree of job stress.

Stress Sources. The primary sources of stress for this sample of teachers as indicated by the data analysis appears to be items 10 and 12 dealing with inadequate salary and lack of recognition. The high ranking given by the teachers to these two items probably accounted for the fact that fewer than 50 percent of these teachers reported being very satisfied with their job. In addition, item nine (lack of respect) under the Professional Dissatisfaction cluster received a relatively high rating from this sample. The sample responses to questions 15, 13, 11 (job involvement) indicated that they felt frustrated by their lack of involvement in decision making, professional involvement and not having opportunities to air his/her opinion regarding school policies. This finding could perhaps be explained by the nature of the school (Bureau of Indian Affairs), as the staff probably had little input regarding policies.

Other areas which seemed to represent major sources of stress for this sample were the Time Management (question 46, 43, 47, and 44) and items 20 and 21 on the Discipline and Motivation domain. The majority indicated that they were unable to find time to relax, that there was not enough time in the work day to get their jobs done and too many things were asked of them. In addition, wasting time or activities perceived as wasting time were a source of stress to many of the teachers. The teachers also indicated that they felt frustrated by having inadequate or poorly defined discipline policies and having their individual authority rejected by students or the administration.

Stress Manifestation. Fimian and Santoro (1983) indicated that emotional manifestation as a result of stress and/or pressure often affect certain behaviors of teachers. In some cases, severe stress can have a detrimental effect on job performance. Examination of the teachers' responses to the items comprising the Stress Manifestation Subscale indicated that, as a whole, this group of teachers did not have any one major area where stress was manifested to a high degree. In fact, the highest score on any item was a 2.0, which certainly is not high on a scale from one to five, on item 36 which deals with physical exhaustion as a result of one's job.

In order to further analyze the data, a one-way analysis of variance was performed regarding sex of respondents versus stressors, race versus stressors, job satisfaction (high and low groups) versus stressors, administrative support (little and very much) versus stressors, and years of teaching experience (less than 10, more than 10) versus the stressor items.

TABLE 1
Summary of the Rank, Means and Strength Measures of TSI Subscale and Scale Scores
as Reported by a Sample of Teachers Working on an Indian Reservation

TABLE 1 (continued)
Summary of the Rank, Means and Strength Measures of TSI Subscale and Scale Scores
as Reported by a Sample of Teachers Working on an Indian Reservation

TABLE 2
Analysis of Variance Between Teachers Who Perceived They Received
Little Administrative Support as Opposed to Those Who Received
a Lot of Administrative Support as Related to Professional Involvement

Analysis of variance between male versus female respondents to the stressors; yielded non-significant results. Teaching experience of the sample was divided into two groups: those with fewer than 10 years (N = 14) and those with 10 years or more (N = 16). Results of the analysis of variance between the two groups' responses to the stressors indicated that there was no significant difference between the groups. The length of teaching experience did not appear to be a major factor regarding the perceived stress experienced by a teacher.

TABLE 3
Analysis of Variance Between Teachers Who Perceived They Received
Administrative Support as Opposed to Those Who Did Not
as Related to Dissatisfaction with His/Her Profession

Analysis of variance was performed between the responses of those teachers who perceived that they received very little administrative support (N = 13) and those teachers who indicated that they received a lot of administrative support (N = 17). Significant difference was found between the groups regarding professional job involvement (questions 11, 13, 14, and 15) and administrative support F (1, 28) = 6.2, p < .01. Significant difference was also found between the two groups regarding professional dissatisfaction (questions 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12) and level of administrative support F (1, 28) = 4. 1, p < .05. Those teachers who perceived that they received very little administrative support appeared to have significantly more stress regarding these two areas than did those teachers who perceived that they received a lot of administrative support. Their finding also was true regarding Time Management. There was a significant difference between these two groups regarding Time Management (questions 42-49) F (1, 28) = 4.6, p < .04.

TABLE 4
Analysis of Variance for the Time Management Cluster
as Related to the Degree of Administrative Support

The sample responses to the various stress manifestation categories was analyzed in terms of teachers who were very satisfied with their jobs (N = 12) versus teachers who were only moderately satisfied or dissatisfied with their jobs (N = 18). Analysis of variance showed that there was significant difference between the two groups' responses to the cardiovascular cluster F (1, 28) = 4.5, p < .04 with less dissatisfied teaching scoring significantly higher. A very interesting finding, which was somewhat unexpected, was the lack of significant difference found between the white teachers and the Native American teachers on the various stress scores and stress manifestations.

TABLE 5
Analysis of Variance for the Cardiovascular Cluster
as Related to the Degree of Job Satisfaction

Analysis of variance was performed between the responses of those teachers who perceived that they were professionally involved in their work (N = 18) and those teachers who indicated that they were not professionally involved (N = 12) as related to job satisfaction. A significant difference was found between the groups F (1, 28) = 4.9, p < .03. As one might expect, those teachers who perceived that they were more professionally involved in their work were more satisfied with their jobs than those teachers who were not professionally involved.

TABLE 6
Analysis of Variance for Professional Involvement
as Related to the Degree of Job Satisfaction

Given the original 49 items, the 10 strongest stressors and stress manifestations were also the 10 most frequently occurring. The mean score for these variables and ranked in descending order of strength are (1) inadequate salary (M = 4.0), (2) lack of recognition (M = 3.4), (3) not enough time for relaxation (M = 3.2), (4) lack of professional involvement (M = 3. 1), (5-9) too much work, lack of control over decisions about school, poorly defined discipline, insufficient time to get things done and distaste for wasting time, each had a mean of 3.0; and (10) personal life being shortchanged.

These findings are congruent with those of Fimian and Santoro's (1983) investigation of stress-related factors among special education teachers, Fimian's (1987) report on expert appraisal of teacher stress, Vance, et al. study of stress in a sample of laboratory school teachers and Weiskopf's (1980) investigation of burnout among teachers of exceptional children.

The present data suggest that the Teacher Stress Inventory (Fimian, 1988) appears to be a psychometrically reliable and valid measure of teacher stress. The instrument could be of potential use in assisting school psychologists, administrators, and counselors in pinpointing stress-related problems in their school districts. In addition, the Teacher Stress Inventory may prove useful in helping to identify teachers and other staff personnel who are experiencing a great deal of discomfort in performing their job.

Holt et al. (1987) indicated that "recognition is needed by society that teacher stress/burnout is a major issue that will not disappear, that it is likely to have escalating negative effects on the quality of education and on the lives of children and that it will require major steps at several levels to precipitate change" (p. 57).

Perhaps colleges and universities that train school-related personnel could provide a more realistic, stress-oriented induction to what the classroom is really like and deliberately develop prospective teacher's skills in identifying stressful situations and generating adaptive responses. The inclusion of the Teacher Stress Inventory (Fimian, 1988) in future research studies, with many different types of teachers with different levels of experience and training and in different settings, are highly recommended.

The teachers who participated in this study were selected from a rural environment and represented only one school district. Further studies should address these limitations with additional focus on whether teacher stress is the function of one's personality traits.

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