Stress sources of primary school teachers and their coping strategies (The case of Kilis)

Stress is the common reaction of the body to adopt itself to any new condition, no matter if it is desirable or not. Today, teaching is accepted as one of the most stressful professions. The stressful nature of teaching has negative effects on school, teachers' performance and teachers' environment. Eliminating deteriorating effects of and identifying effective ways of coping with stress is very important. Therefore, the general aim of aim of this study is to identify organizational stress sources of primary school teachers and explain the strategies they adopt to cope with stress.In the study, the Crosshatching Model and a likert-type questionnaire which was consisted of three chapters and developed by the researcher were used. In the first chapter, there are questions about personal information of teachers . The second chapter includes questions that were intended to measure stress sources of teachers and the third chapter is related to identifying teachers? strategies to cope with stress . The questionnaire was applied to 200 teachers who work in 20 schools in downtown Kilis during 2007-2008 teaching year. Percent, frequency, average, analysis of variance, t-test and Mann Whitney U-test have been used to analyze the collected data.The sub-dimensions were ordered according to stress making levels on teachers as: pupils, facilities of school, inspection, teaching profession, intermeddling of parents, colleagues, and school administration. Disinterest of parents of students inserts the highest level of stress on teachers. Among the stress levels caused by sub-dimensions of stress resources, no significant difference was observed between gender, level of education and field of graduation. It was identified that the stress level that was caused by school facilities, inspection and students significantly changed according to professional experience. In other sub-dimensions, there is not significant difference related to professional experience. Stress level that was caused by the teaching profession was observed to have significantly changed according to marital status. There is no significant difference concerning marital status in other sub-dimensions.Spending time with beloveds, taking part in positive dialogues, creating a positive atmosphere to reduce stress are among teachers' strategies to cope with stress. Significant difference was observed between the frequency of passing time with the beloved, praying, planning the time, and telling dependable people about the condition that produces stress according to gender. No significant difference was observed in the frequency of using other coping strategies in relation to gender. The study also revealed that frequency of using coping strategies did not change according to level of graduation and field of graduation. Taking part in fitness activities to overcome stress was found to have significantly changed according professional experience. The frequency of other strategies did not change according to professional experience. Passing time with the beloved significantly changed according to marital status. There is no significant difference between using other strategies in relation with marital status.