Proforma for the Registration of Subject for Dissertation

PROFORMA FOR THE REGISTRATION OF SUBJECT FOR DISSERTATION

“A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY TO ASSESS THE LEVEL OF STRESSAMONG FEMALE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS DUE TO THEIR WORK LOAD IN SELECTED GOVERNMENT PRIMARY SCHOOLS, TUMKUR WITH A VIEW TO DEVELOP A HEALTH INFORMATIONAL PAMPHLET”

SUBMITTED BY;

ABHILASH CHARLES

MENTAL HEALTH NURSING

SHRIDEVI COLLEGE OF NURSING

SIRA ROAD, LINGAPURA

TUMKUR

2011-13

RAJIV GANDHI UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES

BENGALURU, KARNATAKA

PROFORMA FOR THE REGISTRATION OF

SUBJECT FOR DISSERTATION

1 / NAME OFCANDIDATE AND ADDRESS / MR. ABHILASH CHARLES
1 YEAR M Sc NURSING
SHRIDEVI COLLEGE OF NURSING,
SIRA ROAD, LINGAPURA
TUMKUR
2 / NAME OF THE INSTITUTION / SHRIDEVI COLLEGE OF NURSING
3 / COURSE STUDY AND
SUBJECT / I YEAR M.SC. NURSING
MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
4 / DATE OF ADMISSION TO COURSE / 01/07/2011
5 / TITLE OF THE TOPIC / A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY TO ASSESS THE LEVEL OF STRESS AMONG FEMALE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS DUE TO THEIR WORK LOAD IN SELECTED GOVERNMENT PRIMARY SCHOOLS, TUMKUR WITH A VIEW TO DEVELOP A HEALTH INFORMATIONAL PAMPHLET

1

1. BRIEF RESUME OF THE INTENDED WORK

Introduction

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances” - Thomas Jefferson

Stress is the complex phenomenon that alters both mental and physical nature of the body - forces from the inside or outside world affecting the individual.Stress is to consider it a demand made upon the adaptive capacities of the mind and body. The individual responds to stress in ways that affect the individual as well as their environment. Because of the overabundance of stress in our modern lives, we usually think of stress as a negative experience, but from a biological point of view, stress can be a neutral, negative, or positive experience.

In general, stress is related to both external and internal factors. External factors include the physical environment, including your job, your relationships with others, your home, and all the situations, challenges, difficulties, and expectations you're confronted with on a daily basis. Internal factors determine your body's ability to respond to, and deal with, the external stress-inducing factors. Internal factors which influence your ability to handle stress include your nutritional status, overall health andfitnesslevels, emotional well-being, individual difference, the person’s perceptual factors according to the situation and event and the amount ofsleep and rest you get1.

Some of the warning signs and symptoms of stress are memory problem, inability to concentrate, poor judgment, moodiness, irritable and short tempered agitation, sense of loneliness, loss of sex drive, chest pain, eating more or less, nervous habits(e,g. nail biting, pacing).

Because of both internal and external factor the widespread damage of stress can cause, it’s important to know your own limit. But just how much stress is “too much” differs from person to person. Some people roll with the punches, while others crumble at the slightest obstacle or frustration. Some people even seem to thrive on the excitement and challenge of a high-stress lifestyle

The situations and pressures that cause stress are known asstressors. We usually think of stressors as being negative, such as an exhausting work schedule or a rocky relationship and personal prejudice. However, anything that puts high demands on you or forces you to adjust can be stressful. This includes positive events such as getting married, buying a house, going to college, or receiving a promotion etc.

Some of the common external causes of stress like work, major life changes, financial problem, being too busy.Some of the common internal causes of stress like pessimism, negative self-talk, perfectionism, lack of assertiveness2.

By all definitions theprofessionof teaching has a very prestigious place in all professions. A teacher is a kingpin in the entire system of education. Almost all cultures of the civilized world have considered their teachers in a very high esteem.

Teaching has now become a very demanding occupation with a lot of stresses for a teacher who has a lot of deadlines to meet and a lot of responsibilities to shoulder besides teaching a child what are in a text book.

In relation to the profession of teaching, where a teacher is viewed as dispensers of knowledge; teachers are increasingly perceived as facilitators or managers of knowledge. They work in a constant socially isolated environments surrounded by hostile views and sometimes threat of physical abuse, and at the same time under a constant fear and threat of accountability for each and every action of both own self and that of the pupil. This alone can be a sufficient cause for stress for an individual. But in the case of a teacher it is multiplied by other factors as well.

According to a research the major causes of teacher stress are:

• Excessive working hours
• Excessive workload
• Rising class sizes
• Pressures due to OFSTED inspection
• Changes in curriculum & courses
• Changes to assessment & testing requirements
• Poor management
• Workplace bullying
• Crumbling schools
• Pupil misbehavior
• Risk of violence from pupils, parents and intruders
• Lack of support with bureaucracy, form filling and routine tasks
• Lack of control over the job
• Burden of providing cover
• Threat to early retirement arrangements
• Denigration of profession by politicians & media
• Lack of public esteem3

Teachers are generally supportive of education reforms, which they agree can enhance education quality and benefit students. However, the reforms have inevitably brought about new tasks and challenges, and thus, teachers need time, training and appropriate support to put them in place.

Since female teachers have generally accepted reduced teaching duties as an effective means of relieving their workload, schools should exercise discretion to reduce teachers' teaching load and, where appropriate, flexibly adopt suitable class sizes to achieve the best teaching and learning outcomes, Ko said.

Female Teachers' stress is not a new problem. It is almost 10 years since the first case was brought by a teacher suing the government for the stress of work. Muriel Benson, a head of year at a secondary school in the Wirral, won £47,000 compensation for illness caused by stress in an out-of-court settlement in 1999. Since then, the NUT has backed more than 90 cases where teachers have won compensation.

Classroom life has a uniquely stressful nature,' said Stan Gilmore, of the Institute of Counseling. 'Teachers can never drop their guard and are required to exercise a level of unremitting control over upwards of 30 pupils.

Most female teachers, if they are honest, will testify that at some point in their teaching career they have encountered difficulties in coping with the relevant less pressure to maintain order, leading to the kind of emotional exhaustion colloquially known as a "mental breakdown”.

The government is acutely aware of the issue. The Health and Safety Executive is targeting education as one of the top five priority sectors for tackling workplace stress. But the signs are that it has yet to succeed. Last year, a survey carried out by the teacher’s counseling service, the Teacher Support Network (TSN) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that demands on staff and their time had increased over the past five years. Seven in every 10 teachers and lecturers said their health had suffered because of the job. Among school leaders, three-quarters said their health was affected4.

6.1 NEED FOR THE STUDY

The word stress is defined as a state of affair involving demand on physical or mental energy. A condition or circumstance, which can disturb the normal physiological and psychological functioning of an individual. In medical parlance stress is defined as a perturbation of the body`s homeostasis. This demand on mind-body occurs when it tries to cope with incessant changes in life. A stress condition seems relative in nature. Today, with the rapid diversification of human activity, we come face to face with numerous causes ofstressand the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Research conducted by the Health and Safety Executive committee in 2000 found teaching is the most stressful profession, with 41 .5% of teachers reporting themselves as “highly stressed”5.

According to two recent surveys conducted by the committee, in which more than 7,000 teachers were interviewed, more than half of the respondents said they believed teachers were responsible for such duties as teaching, student evaluation, school open days and other related activities like conducting programmes, health check up camps, census, survey, election work, conferences etc,.

• More than half of the 147 million workers in the European Union complained of having to work at a very high speed and under tight deadlines;

• Approximately half reported having monotonous or short, repetitive tasks and no opportunity to rotate tasks6.

Occupational pressures are believed responsible for:

• 30% of workers suffering from back pain;
• 28% complaining of “stress”
• 20% feeling fatigued
• 13% with headache7.

Coats and Thoresen (1976) in their review of studies on female Teacher anxiety quote the NEA report to show the growing incidence of teacher anxiety. Kyriacou and Sutcliffe (1978) in a study of 257 in a study of 257 teachers of 16 schools in England noted that l5.6% found being a female teacher ‘very’ stressful while 4.3 thousand found it ‘extremely’ stressful (total 19.9%). David, W.Chan and Eadaoin, K.P.Hui (1998) reported that regardless of gender and guidance status, teachers with low stress and high support levels generally reported less general psychological symptoms, and female teachers with high support level reported less specific symptoms related to anxiety and sleep problems. Whereas the studies of Arikewuyo and M.Olalekan (2004) disclosed that the average Nigerian teacher prefers to organize him/herself in such a way that his/her pedagogic duties will not be hampered by domestic chores. It also implies that, whenever the teacher is stressed, he/she consoles him/herself with the fact that work is not everything and therefore feels less stressed. The teachers never use the active cognitive strategies. Their feeling is that nothing probably can be challenged in stressful situations. The teachers also express mixed feelings about the adoption of inactive behavioural strategies8.

Stress at Work

• 61% of workers list heavy workloads as a significant impact on stress levels.

• 25% of workers have taken a mental health day to cope with stress.

• 54% of workers are concerned about health problems due to stress.

All of the above statistics related to work stress were reported by a 2004 survey conducted by the APA.

• According to a CBS Evening News fifth annual Labor Day survey, more than half of Americans are somewhat or extremely stressed at work.

• 40% of teachers report that their job is “very or extremely” stressful. Survey by Northwestern National Life

• 25% of teachersview their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives among primary school teachers. Survey by Northwestern National Live

• 26% of teachersreport they are “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work”. Survey by the Families and Work Institute

• 29% of teachers report they feel “quite a bit or extremely stressed at work”. Survey by Yale University9.

Hicks conducted a study on the mental health of teachers and found that 17% of 600 teachers were generally nervous. In(1936)Peck found that 37% of the teachers he studied had nervous symptoms. Canadian researcher, Hans Selye (1956), first pioneered the theory of stress as a non-specific response of the body to any demand made on it to adapt. Some stress is seen as being essential to promote growth; indeed, it can be "the spice of life" (Selye, 1974). Stress, according to Selye, can be either harmful or beneficial. He used the terms distress and eustress to distinguish between two types of stress respectively. Another way to look at stress is to consider it a demand made upon the adaptive capacities of the mind and body. If these capacities can manage the pressure and benefit from the stimulation involved, then stress is appreciated and beneficial. If individuals cannot and find the demand debilitating, then stress is unwelcome and unhelpful (Fontana, 1989). Although there is no single universally accepted definition of stress, Selye believed that stress is a perception, caused by being conscientious and hard work10.

The study has investigated the issues of work and family stress for a sample of female primary school teachers in government schools. Women were chosen as: (a) 78 per cent of full-time teachers in government primary schools are female (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 1999); and (b) because of the unequal division of labour at home, women who are employed full-time have a greater total workload than their male counterparts (Lundberg & Frankenhaeuser, 1999).

Of the 25 teachers in England in Kyriacou’s & Sutcliffe’s self-report study (1978), 20% described teaching as very stressful or extremely stressful. Seventeen symptoms of stress were identified, the most common being ‘feeling exhausted’ and ‘frustrated’. These feelings of stress were in response to four particular stressors: pupil misbehaviour, poor working conditions, time pressures, and poor school character. Similarly, in Hiebert’s study of Canadian teachers work overload (or lack of sufficient time) and student discipline were the most consistently reported stressors

Considering the above statistics, indicating feelings of stress and strain due to a heavy workload in a physically unhealthy environment, without the support or resources they feel they need, it is easy to understand why 79% of these teachers rarely go to a movie, theatre or concert. They have no time or the mental or physical energy required. Worrisome are the 16% who report using excessive amounts of alcohol and the 39% who rarely get the sleep they feel they need.

Work-related stress is defined as a harmful reaction people have to undue pressures and demands place on them at work.Although the importance of individual differences cannot be ignored, scientific evidence suggests that certain working conditions are stressful to most people. Such evidence argues for a greater emphasis on working conditions as the key source of job stress, and for job redesign as a primary prevention strategy. Large surveys of working conditions, including conditions recognized as risk factors for job stress, were conducted in member states of theEuropean Unionin 1990, 1995, and 2000. Results showed a time trend suggesting an increase in work intensity. In 1990, the percentage of workers reporting that they worked at high speeds at least one-quarter of their working time was 48%, increasing to 54% in 1995 and to 56% in 2000. Similarly, 50% of workers reported they work against tight deadlines at least one-fourth of their working time in 1990, increasing to 56% in 1995 and 60% in 2000. However, no change was noted in the period 1995–2000 (data not collected in 1990) in the percentage of workers reporting sufficient time to complete tasks.

A substantial percentage of Americans work very long hours. By one estimate, more than 26% of men and more than 11% of women worked 50 hours per week or more in 2000. These figures represent a considerable increase over the previous three decades, especially for women. According to theDepartment of Labor, there has been an upward trend in hours worked among employed women, an increase in extended work weeks (>40 hours) by men, and a considerable increase in combined working hours among working couples, particularly couples with young children11.

According to the researcher the female teachers possess the more work load both in home and school the researcher conclude this by their statistical findings.

6.2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The review of literature is defined as broad, comprehensive in-depth, systematic and critical review of scholarly publications, unpublished scholarly print materials, audio visual materials and personal communications.

Yang X,Wang L(Feb 2011),et alconducted a study on factors associated with occupational strain among Chinese teachers. To assess occupational strain and explored the related factors among Chinese teachers.The researcher used a cross-sectional with cluster sampling, population was composed of 3570 school teachers working in 64 primary and middle schools in Heping District in Shenyang, China. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Multivariate linear regression analyses were performed to study the factors related to occupational strain.

The average score on the Personal Strain Questionnaire (PSQ) for the whole study population was 106.5 (107.5 in men and 106.3 in women).The study reveals that most teachers in this study experienced a high degree of occupational strain. Chronic disease, days of sick leave, recent experience of a stressful life event and divorced/separated/widowed status played prominent roles in occupational strain. Recreation and training in coping abilities are needed to enhance positive working environments and attenuate the occupational strain imposed on teachers12.

Masilamani R,Darus A(Mar 2011) et al conducted a study on salivary Biomarkers ofStressAmongTeachersin an Urban Setting, the aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of jobstressamong secondary schoolteachersusing Karasek Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ). A cross-sectional study was undertaken using JCQ and salivary cortisol and IgA samples. Cluster sampling was done yielding 302 respondents. The prevalence ofstressamong allteacherswas 20.2%. Being a Malay, teaching experience of 5 to 10 years, and those without a supervisor's support had higher prevalence of high job strain.Teachersin the 31 to 40 years age bracket, educating handicapped children with the absence of supervisor support exhibited higherstresslevels with lower log salivary IgA levels. Further studies must be conducted using salivary biomarkers to study the in-depth relationship ofstress, extending into otheroccupationalgroups13.

Camerino D,Fichera GP(May 2011)et al conducted a study on work-relatedstressin nurseryschooleducators in the Venice and Marghera districts, which says based on an investigation on organizational well-being in the Municipality of Venice (2009), we examined 110 public nurseryschooland preschoolteachersworking in the Venice and Marghera districts.The aim of this study was to develop and implement a procedure for work-relatedstressassessment and management in Municipality of Venice, in the light of Law 81/2008. Occupationalstressand its impact onteachers' well-being and health were assessed by means of self-administered questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Descriptive analyses were conducted to compareteachers' data with those concerning employees operating in other services in the Venice and Marghera districts. The study revealed that, while nurseryschooland preschoolteacherswork with considerable commitment, vigor, dedication and involvement, problems were observed related to: assignment of administrative tasks without appropriate support from the district offices; difficult access to support services; shortage of temporaryteachersand auxiliary personnel and, limited to some facilities, lack of adequate physical space devoted to teaching activities. Improving such adverse conditions could solve the current marginalization of public nurseryschooland preschoolteachersand encourage mutual exchange of information, which would in turn favour more appropriate methods of managing each single facility14.