Exploring sources of teacher's perceived stress in Romanian pre-tertiary education

Abstract

"Stress has become a widespread phenomenon in the educational system, a large number of empirical studies documenting its prevalence. This paper presents the findings of a quantitative study (N=2165) regarding the self-perceived stress of Romanian educators and teachers from pre-tertiary educational level. Based on the ten-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) (Cohen & Williamson, 1988), our study examines the relationship between the stress experienced by teachers and various demographic, organizational and job-related variables. The findings underline the fact that no significant differences in experiencing stress are due to different background variables (such as school location, fulfilling management and union leader roles, or being a commuter), age being positively correlated with perceived stress. Associations have been reported with various workplace hazards, as well as with the satisfaction regarding different aspects of the job and professional activity, insatisfaction regarding the relationship with the students and paperwork being the strongest predictors. Starting from these results, the paper also outlines some practical measures that can be implemented in view of reducing the stress of Romanian teachers from pre-tertiary education"