Quality in Teaching Through Managing Causes Creating Stress Among the Teachers

A RESEARCH PAPER ON
QUALITY IN TEACHING THROUGH MANAGING CAUSES CREATING STRESS AMONG THE TEACHERS
TO BE PRESENTED BY

DR.GIRISHKUMAR P.RAVAL
(Associate Professor,B.D.Shah College of Education,
Modasa, Dist: Sabarkantha ,Gujarat, India) AT
NATIONAL SEMINAR
ON
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ON QUALITY CONCERNS
SPONSORED BY
INDIAN COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH, MUMBAI
AND
ORGANISED BY

SHRI C.H.SHAH MAITRIVIDYAPEETH MAHILA COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
SURENDRANAGAR-363 002
ON
JANUARY 7-8, 2012

A RESEARCH PAPER ON QUALITY IN TEACHING THROUGH MANAGING CAUSES CREATING STRESS AMONG THE TEACHERS DR.GIRISHKUMAR P.RAVAL Associate Professor B.D.Shah College of Education, Modasa, Dist: Sabarkantha, Gujatat, India.

INTRODUCTION
Teachers are at the centre of transformation in learning to facilitate each and every student to enjoy learning and achieve one’s potential. Student enjoy learning and learn with interest to understand..It is essential for the teachers to make the classroom interaction more effective to bring quality in the outcome of teaching process. A teacher is an important entity working in educational environment with living beings all around in the school and outside. During his course of time the teachers act with many people. In the interaction with various kind of positive and negative incidences also take place or they may be created by teachers own personal problems too. These incidents results some time in a form called stress which may directly or indirectly become obstacles in bringing excellence in teaching-learning process and hence overall outcome of the school. Stress is a common and personal mental phenomenon related to every life on this globe. The ‘stress’ is so ubiquitous that it is used as noun when we talk about being under ‘stress’, as a verb when events are ‘stressing’ us and as an adjective when modern life has become ‘stressful’. Indeed, stress has come to characterize modern life and it has found a place in our modern lexicon as fast foods, junk bonds and software packages.
There is no field where stressful events do not happen and there is no person who has not experienced any kind of stress. Responses taken from the teachers regarding teaching and other activities of the teachers also shows that they work under higher load and mental pressures of various types as the teachers of primary, secondary and higher secondary performs in variety of activities and programmes other than classroom teachings.
The teachers at all level have to work in the environment where there is directly or indirectly interaction has to take place between the teachers and students, principal, parents, society, non-teaching staff, government officers, nodal convener, CRC and BRC, of local management committee, etc.which may remain positive or negative, The negative interaction or attitude of the people around person creates stressful environment for the teachers. In the recent time expectations of students, parents and society have risen up and the teachers at primary, secondary and higher secondary schools have to show their performance in better way even under stressful situations in the school. It is clear that for the teachers in the school and outside the school there are many sources which become cause to create stress in them due to one or the other reasons. The performance of teacher in the classroom teaching is affected by stress factors and it depends upon how teachers react or cope with the stress inducing situations.
Thus, looking at the present scenario of teachers stress in classroom teaching researcher decided to find out causes creating stress among the teachers and their impact on the various three types of group of teachers.

OBJECTIVES
1. To study causes for creating stress by stress factors among the school teachers.
2. To study the impact of sex, and education level of the teachers on the causes for creating stress by the stress factors

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. What are the causes for creating stress by the stress factors among school teachers?
2. Is there any difference in causes creating stress by the stress factor among school teachers?
3. Is there any difference in causes for creating stress by stress factors among primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers?

RESEARCH PROCEDURE
Tool
Investigator has used Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI) constructed and validated by the investigator himself to collect data for causes creating stress to the teachers and impact of various group of teachers on the causes creating stress by the stress factors.
The final form of TSI was constructed in view to find total stress score experienced by the teachers. Final form of TSI was printed on 22 pages. The general information were asked from the teacher responding Teacher Stress Inventory and they were asked to selected any three most stress creating stress factors out of given 20 stress factors. In the TSI the list of four cause creating stress among the teachers for each of twenty stress factors selected at the second stage of development of primary form of TSI is given under the instruction in the first step of TSI the squares were given before each cause creating stress among the teachers and teachers were asked to tick mark ‘√ ' in the square beside two statement of causes that they find the most causative.
The Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI) contains as many as 20 stress factors was administered on 450 teachers of the sample.
Sample
There are 2397 primary school having 7775 teachers, 320 secondary schools having 1950 teachers and 176 higher secondary schools having 950 teachers in Sabarkantha district which was population of present study. Stratified random sampling technique has been used in the selection of sample of 450 teachers of the primary, secondary and higher secondary schools situated in Sabarkantha district of Gujarat in India in which 200 teachers from primary,150 from secondary and 100 from higher secondary schools were selected

RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY
Reliability of TSI was found to be 0.96 using test-retest techniques and validity of TSI was decided through discussion with principals of concern schools by discussion regarding behavioral patterns and working styles of selected first fifty higher stress and lower stress teachers and it was matching with the stress scores of concern teachers. It proves that the stress score obtained using TSI are correct. It shows that stress factors, causes creating stress given in TSI and total stress score obtained are valid.

DATA COLLECTION AND STATISTICAL TREATMENT
Investigator himself visited schools selected in the sample with permission of the principal and concern teacher selected in the sample and TSI was administered on the sample of 450 teachers of primary, secondary and higher secondary schools. After collection of TSI they were assessed according to scoring scheme developed and instructions regarding scoring were given in the scale, the scoring procedure was done for (four) type of data of the teachers.(1)Causes creating stress for most stress creating first five stress factors, (2) Sex of teacher : Male or Female. (3) Education level of the teacher of the school: Primary teacher, Secondary teacher or Higher secondary teacher and (4) Total stress score of the subject. The data converted in the form of score using scoring procedure and then after they were analysed.To achieve two objective four research questions were formed and frequency distribution, percentage & X2 technique were used to analyse data.

FINDINGS
According to objectives and research questions following findings were obtained after analysis of data collected using TSI.
(1)Results for causes for creating stress by stress factors among the school teachers:
(i) In selection of two causes for first high stress creating stress factor out of 179 teachers,108 teachers with 60.3% have selected cause number-4 and 97 teachers with 54.4% have selected cause number-3. It means that the first high stress creating stress factor, that is, “Students having very low level of intelligence”, creates stress among the teachers due to two causes, cause number-4, that is, “Result is found low even if proper attempts are made”, and cause number-3, that is, “It takes more time to give clear explanation”.
(ii) In selection of two causes for second high stress creating stress factor, out of 169 teachers, 109 teachers with 64.5% have selected cause number-3, and 87 teachers with 51.5% have selected cause number-2. It means that the second high stress creating stress factor, that is, “Apathy of parents towards parents meetings”, creates stress among the teachers due to two causes, cause number-3, that is, “Apathy of parents in educational development of pupil”, and cause number-2, that is, “Co-operation of parents is not avail for better results of the school”.
(iii) In selection of two causes for the third high stress creating stress factor, out of 153 teachers, 102 teachers with 66.7% have selected cause number-1 and 79 teachers with 51.6% have selected cause number-4. It means that the third high stress creating stress factors, that is, “Lack of extra teaching arrangements for the weak students”, creates stress among the teachers due to two causes, cause number-1, that is, “Lack of drilling of the teaching points taught in the classroom”, and cause number-4, that is, “Responsibility of the teacher for clarity during the classroom teaching increases”.
(iv) In selection of two causes for the fourth high stress creating stress factor out of 148 teachers, 116 teachers with 78.4% have selected cause number-2 and 85 teachers with 57.4% have selected cause number-1. It means that, the fourth high stress creating stress factor, that is, “Inadequate educational facilities in the school”, creates stress among the teachers due to two causes ,cause number-2, that is, “Classroom teaching cannot be done according to planning”, and cause number-1, that is, “Desire to work with clarity do not fulfill”.
(v) In selection of two causes for fifth high stress creating stress factor, out of 114 teachers, 76 teachers with 66.7% have selected cause number-1 and 57 teachers with 50.0% have selected cause number-2. It means that, the fifth high stress creating stress factor, that is, “Students low achievement in the examinations”, creates stress among the teachers due to two causes, cause number-1, that is, “Prestige of school decreases”, and cause number-2, that is, “Number of students in taking new admission in the school reduces”.
(2) The impact of sex and education level of the teachers on causes for creating stress.
The impact of three variables on causes for creating stress among the school teachers are presented here in sequence.
[1] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes for first most stress creating stress factor by male & female teachers were 4.416, 1.170, 0.000, and 1.099 for cause number 1, 2, 3, & 4 respectively. Out of these four values, the value for cause-1 was significant at 0.05 level.
[2] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes for second stress factor by male & female teachers were 1.970, 0.147, 0.969, and 0.002 for cause number 1, 2, 3, & 4 respectively. All the values of Xᵪ2 for causes were not significant.
[3] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes for the third most stress creating stress factor by male and female teachers were 1.485, 4.441, 0.264, 0.079 for cause number 1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. Out of these four values, the value of X2 for cause number-2, was significant at 0.05 level.
[4] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes for the fourth most stress creating stress factor by male and female teachers were 0.123, 0.018, 2.757, 1.585 for causes number 1,2, 3 & 4 respectively. All the values of x2 for cause were not significant.
[5] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes for fifth most stress creating stress factor by male and female teachers were 6.841, 0.757, 1.179, 0.285 for the cause number 1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. Out of these four values, the value of X2 for cause number-1 was significant at 0.01 level.
[6] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes of the first most stress creating stress factor by primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers were 8.263, 12.848, 0.039, 2.309 for cause number-1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. Out of these four values, the values of X2 for cause number-1, was significant at 0.05 level and cause number-2 was significant at 0.01 level.
[7] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes of the second most stress creating stress factor by primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers were 0.563, 0.737, 2.603, 2.309 for cause number 1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. All the values of X2 for causes were not significant.
[8] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes of the third most stress creating stress factor by primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers were 1.114, 8.780, 0.972, and 3.527 for cause number 1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. Out of these four values, value of X2 for cause number-2, was significant at 0.05 level.
[9] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes of the fourth most stress creating stress factor by primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers were 1.415, 1.294, 1.744, 2.396 for cause number 1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. All the four values of X2 were not significant.
[10] The values of X2 for significance of difference in selection of causes of the fifth most stress creating stress factor by primary, secondary and higher secondary teachers were 11.169, 0.150, 4.084, 3.380 for cause number-1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. Out of these four values, value of X2 for cause number-1, was significant at 0.01 level.
To bring quality in day-to-day classroom teaching and other co-curricular activities it is essential for the teachers working at all levels in education that they must manage their stresses mentally and physically as well. To manage the stresses in the school and outside the school teacher need to be aware of the situations creating stress as precautionary measures and even though if teacher persists such stresses then it should be removed directly or indirectly through various mechanisms of understanding, meditation, yoga, etc.All in all the teachers stresses with what so ever reasons should not affect the quality of the classroom teachingshould be the prime motive of each and every teacher.

CONCLUSION
The teachers of primary, secondary and higher secondary school are found suffering from different stress factors. It is necessary for the teachers to identify that which are the actual causes creating stress to them individually and they should made enough attempts to reduce the causes of the stress inducing situations gradually when they are in the position to do so. The teachers should also use another alternative of regularly practicing Yoga and Meditation along with physical exercises like, walking, jogging, asans, playing indoor and outdoor games, etc.Develop some leisure time actives as hobby, like, listening music, playing music instrument of choice, to go on tour or picnic, learn computer and internet, surfing on internet, chatting with friends on internet, dancing, ect.Quality of teaching has high concern with the mental health stability of the teacher community for over all development of tha nation at large.

REFERENCES
Blase, J.J. (1986) A qualitative analysis of sources of teacher stress: consequences for performance, American Educational Research Journal.23 (1).Pp13-40.
Bernard, H.W. (1970). Mental Health in the Classroom. New York: Mc Graw Hill Book Company.
Cartwright S. and Cooper, C. (1997) Managing workplaces stress. Sage Publication, New Delhi.
Pastonjee, D.M. (1997) Stress and Coping, Saga Publication, New Delhi.
Ross, R.and Altmaier, E. (1997) Intervention in occupational stress. Sage Publication Inc, California.

References: Blase, J.J. (1986) A qualitative analysis of sources of teacher stress: consequences for performance, American Educational Research Journal.23 (1).Pp13-40. Bernard, H.W. (1970). Mental Health in the Classroom. New York: Mc Graw Hill Book Company. Cartwright S. and Cooper, C. (1997) Managing workplaces stress. Sage Publication, New Delhi. Pastonjee, D.M. (1997) Stress and Coping, Saga Publication, New Delhi. Ross, R.and Altmaier, E. (1997) Intervention in occupational stress. Sage Publication Inc, California.