Comparative analysis of organizational stress sources of teachers who work in general high schools and anatolian high schools

Being as old as the mankind history, stress phenomenon is one of the basic elements that threaten the life individually, organizationally and increasingly institutionally.One of the social institutions in which the stress is experienced intensively is education. The stressful situations experienced at schools which are the organizations of educational institution affect teachers? efficiency in a negative way. The definition of the organizational stress sources is required in order to cope with this problem.In this study, it was aimed at comparing the organizational stress sources of the teachers working at General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools.The population of the study, which was a descriptive study based on survey model, was composed of 1071 teachers in total, 830 of whom were working at 23 General High Schools and 241 of whom were working at 5 Anatolian High Schools within the borders of Malatya province in 2009-2010 educational year. As for the sampling, there were 692 teachers in total, 451 of whom were working at 10 General High Schools and 241 of whom were working at 5 Anatolian High Schools.The ?Survey of Teachers? Organizational Stress Sources?, developed by Aslan (1995), was used as the data collection tool; and the organizational stress sources of teachers were investigated under 13 dimensions (Contributing to Decision Making Process, Communication, the Attitudes and Behaviors of the Administrators, Control Style, Working Conditions, Promoting and Development Opportunities, Professional Insurance, Professional Appearance, Organizational Opportunities, Role-Conflict-Role Ambiguity, Human Relationships, the Attitudes and Behaviors of the Students, the Attitudes and Behaviors of the Parents).The scale was composed of two parts. The first part of the scale is composed of questions related to the personal information of the participants (the type of school working at, gender, professional seniority, branch, the school graduated recently). In the second part of the scale, there were 71 items for measuring the perceptions of the teachers working at General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools towards organizational stress sources. The scale was graded as strongly agree (5), agree (4), somewhat agree (3), disagree (2) and strongly disagree (1).The standard deviations, frequencies, percentages and arithmetic averages were taken into account for the responses that participants graded between 1 and 5 about each item and dimension in the scale.In order to determine whether there was a significant difference among the stress perceptions of the teachers working at General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools t-test was used for paired comparisons and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for multi-comparisons. In addition to this, t-test was used in order to determine the source of the difference between groups in which a significant difference was observed after multi comparisons.At the end of the study, the following results were obtained:1. While the organizational stress perceptions of the teachers at General High Schools were at ?medium? level, the organizational stress perceptions of the teachers at Anatolian High Schools were at ?low? level.2. The organizational stress perceptions of the teachers working at General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools were not significantly different from each other in terms of ?contributing to decision making process, promoting and development opportunities, professional insurance, professional appearance, organizational opportunities, role conflict-role ambiguity and the attitudes and behaviors of the parents? dimensions.3. While the teachers working at General High Schools were more stressful in ?communication, the attitudes and behaviors of teachers, working conditions? dimensions, the teachers working at Anatolian High Schools perceive stress at higher levels in ?human relationships and the attitudes and behaviors of the students? dimensions.4. There was no significant difference in the perceptions of the teachers both at General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools related to the organizational stress they experienced in terms of gender. It was observed that the male teachers at Anatolian High Schools experienced more stress compared to the female teachers. It was also found that male teachers had more stress in terms of the ?professional appearance? and ?the attitudes and behaviors of the students? sub dimensions of organizational stress.5. When the type of school variable, General High School-Anatolian High School, was examined in terms of gender, there was no significant difference between the organizational stress sources of male and female teachers regardless of any sub dimensions.6. There was no significant difference between the stress levels of the teachers working at General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools in terms of seniority variable when it was examined both as a whole and as the sub dimensions of organizational stress. The teachers working at General High Schools for 6-10 years experienced more stress than their colleagues at Anatolian High Schools in terms of ?contributing to decision making process, control style and the attitudes and behaviors of the administrators? dimensions. The teachers working at General High Schools for 16-20 years experienced stress at higher levels in terms of ?human relationships? dimension. Moreover, the teachers working at General High Schools for more than 20 years experienced stress at higher levels in terms of ?role conflict-role ambiguity?; and their colleagues in the same seniority group at Anatolian High Schools experienced stress at higher levels in terms of ?the attitudes and behaviors of the students? dimension.7. When the organizational stress sources were examined as a whole, there was no significant difference among the perceptions of all branches of teachers both in General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools in terms of branch variable.8. When it was examined in terms dimensions, there was a significant difference in terms of four dimensions ?contributing to decision making process, the attitudes and behaviors of administrators, control style and working conditions and only among the branches of teachers at Anatolian High Schools.9. Although there was no significant difference among the teachers working General High Schools and Anatolian High Schools in terms of the graduated school type in terms of organizational stress perceptions, it was found that Anatolian High School teachers who were graduates of faculty of education experienced more stress than the teachers graduated from different faculties. When it was examined in terms of the dimensions, it was found that the Anatolian High School teachers who graduated from faculty of education experienced more stress than their colleagues who were graduated from other faculties in terms of ?the attitudes and behaviors of administrators? sub dimension of organizational stress.10. In terms of ?control style? sub dimension of organizational stress, the General High School teachers who were graduated from faculty of education experienced more stress in ?control style? dimension of organizational stress and graduates of other faculties working at General High Schools experienced more stress in terms of ?human relationships? dimension. Anatolian High School teachers who graduated from faculty of education experienced more stress in terms of ?the attitudes and behaviors of the students? than their colleagues at General High Schools. Anatolian High School teachers who graduated from the other faculties than faculty of education were more stressful than the ones at General High Schools.Based on the research results above proposals which can be effective with teachers about organizational stress sources that come from students, parents, and school administration are made.