Teacher Stress and How to Cope

Teaching is stressful. The demands placed on teachers result in emotional exhaustion and burnout, causing many to leave the profession early. The purpose of the study was to examine whether the coping process utilized by teachers differed at different stages of their career. The current study utilized a portion of the baseline interview of a randomized waitlist control study conducted to explore the effects of a mindfulness-based program on teachers. After coding the interview data for each step of the coping process (i.e., demands, appraisals, ways of coping, resolution, and post-coping assessment), a Frequency Analysis was conducted to determine the rate of occurrence with which teachers report each step listed above. In addition, a series of Chi-square analyses were administered to explore whether there is an association between how the teachers responded to questions corresponding to each step of coping process. Finally, pairwise comparisons were conducted using data from each step to determine which groups of teachers differed from each other. The results indicated that teachers do indeed differ in terms of perceived stress and their chosen method of coping.