7/31/2019 Dr Talat Assign
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SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHER STRESS
A teacher is a superstar in the entire system of education in
Pakistan. Almost all cultures of the
civilized world have considered their teachers in a very high
esteem.
Times have changed and the societies and cultures have
drastically diversified, but the tasks of ateacher are primarily
the same, which is the transfer of knowledge to the next
generation. With change
in cultural norms and traditions in the societies there has been
a drastic change in the expectations
from a teacher. Some of these changes have limited the measures
which a teacher in the past could
exercise in disciplining a student and some have put additional
burden on teachers in respect their
preparation of lessons and adopting and maintaining their
teaching styles. This is because most of the
school systems prefer to maintain uniformity in all of their
branches.
Teaching has now become a very demanding occupation with a lot
of stresses for a teacher especially
the Secondary school teachers, 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.
Primarily the role and responsibility of a
teacher is multitasked in the present day school system. This
was altogether different just a few years
ago. With the change in the type of teaching culture and added
managerial responsibilities for teachers
include planning and executing instructional lessons, assessing
students based on specific objectives
derived from a set curriculum, and communicating with parents at
the both public and private sector.
Teaching has been identified as one of the most stressful
professions today. The reasons for that are
quite similar to other stressful occupations in Pakistan.
Different reasons that cause distress to
teachers are stress, anxiety and depression, conflict with
managers or colleagues, pressure of
workload and excessive changes, loss of confidence and
performance anxiety, relationship marital and
family problems.
Stress is considered as an involuntary response to a dangerous
situation. When we face a situation
which our brain is incapable of handling, then it leads to
different diseases like high blood pressure,
rapid heartbeat, reduced blood supply to the skin, decrease in
immune systems functions etc.
According to a research the major causes of teacher stress are:
excessive working hours, excessive
workload, rising class sizes, changes in curriculum &
courses, changes to assessment & testing
requirements, poor management, pupil misbehaviour, lack of job
security due to joblessness and fixed
term contracts.
According to a survey the types of stress of the public and
private school teachers at secondary level,
are quite different. In private sector the teachers are more
stressed as compared to public sector. Themost common stress issues
in public and private sector are; Job insecurity, in private
sector, is a
biggest stress for the teachers. The principles of the secondary
schools are completely independent to
hire and fire the teachers irrespective of the merit but the
situation is quite opposite in public sector.
Less salary and rewards, in private sector, there is no criteria
or settled procedure because lot of
female teachers are available in the market at less salary
rates. No set curriculum, private sector of
schools there is variation in curriculum for the schools but
public sector has a predefined curriculum.
Testing criteria is another issue in public sector. Too much
testing and checking work causes stress
and anxiety for teachers who had domestic problems also. Public
sector teachers are mentally relaxed
because of predefined test system.
