SelfEfficacy and Stress in Teachers

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Self-Efficacy and Stress in Teachers

• Marc Dussault, Marc Bachand and Richard Pépin
• Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada

Reprint www.uqtr.ca/dussault/EAWOP
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SUMMARY

• The aim of the study is to investigate the
  relationship between self-efficacy and stress in
  teachers. A sample of 268 French Canadian
  teachers were administered the Teacher Efficacy
  Scale and Teacher Stress Inventory. Even if the
  results indicate, as expected, a negative and
  significant correlation (r -.19, p lt .01)
  between the scores on Teacher Efficacy Scale and
  Teacher Stress Inventory, there was no relation
  between personal teaching efficacy and stress.
  The study highlights the importance to continue
  research on teacher self-efficacy.

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Introduction

• Since the late seventies, teaching has been
  recognise as a highly stressful profession.
• Teacher stress may be defined as a response of
  negative affect resulting from aspects of the
  teachers job and mediated by the perception that
  the demands made upon the teacher constitute a
  threat to his well-being.
• Given the role of cognitive appraisal, stress
  reactions can be determined by individuals
  perception such as self-efficacy.
• Therefore, the study is aiming at testing the
  link between teachers self-efficacy and their
  level of occupational stress.

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Theoretical Framework
Teaching efficacy
Self-efficacy
Personal teaching efficacy
Gibson Dembo (1984).
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Boyle et al. (1995)
Workload
Student misbehaviour
Professional recognition
Stress
Classroom resources
Poor colleague relations
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Method

• Participants
• 179 female and 89 male teachers.
• Average age 41.7 years
• Teaching experience 16.1 years in average.
• Questionnaires
• Teacher stress inventory (Boyle et al., 1995).
• Teacher efficacy scale (Gibson Dembo, 1984).
• Satisfaction at work was assessed with a single
  item on a 5-point scale from 1 (not satisfied at
  all at work) to 5 (extremely satisfied at work).
• Support at work was assessed with a single item
  on a 5-point scale from 1 (not at all supported
  at work) to 5 (extremely supported at work).

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Results
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Discussion

• The sample of teachers presents a fairly low
  sense of teaching efficacy and a high sense of
  personal teaching efficacy. It is as if they
  believe in their capacities to make pupils learn
  but they also doubt that pupils can learned.
• The level of stress expressed is moderate.
  Student misbehaviour and workload are the most
  important sources of teachers stress.
• Surprisingly, personal teaching efficacy was not
  related to teachers stress. Teaching efficacy
  was moderately and negatively correlated with
  student misbehaviour and weakly and negatively
  correlated with other sources of teachers
  stress.
• As expected, support was found to be positively
  correlated with teaching efficacy and negatively
  related to all sources of stress.
• Finally, a moderate correlation was observed
  between feeling of support and satisfaction at
  work of teachers.

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Conclusion

• The predictive value of personal teaching
  efficacy on stress which was verified in other
  studies, was not verified in the present study.
  Such result can be explained by the small among
  of variation and the high scores..
• The study has limitations and the results await
  replications. The study is limited by the nature
  of its correlational design which does not permit
  the testing of the causal relation between
  teachers self-efficacy and their stress level.
  The study highlights the need for longitudinal
  studies and path analysis to confirm the causal
  relations.