Occupational Stress Among Chinese Early Career Secondary Teachers

Download or read book Occupational Stress Among Chinese Early Career Secondary Teachers written by Xinyi Wang (MEd.) and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While occupational stress is an inevitable part of being a teacher, early career teachers are often more vulnerable to the negative effects of job-related stress due to their age and level of experience. Since early career teachers represent the future of the teaching workforce, it is vital to gain greater understandings about the causes of stress and ways to overcome the negative aspects of stress if new teachers are to be retained in the profession and thrive in ways that are conducive to their professional development and learning. Despite its importance, there appears to be a lack of Chinese research in the area, especially in terms of research investigating early career teachers in China. This gap provided the impetus for the current research. This qualitative study investigated Chinese early career secondary teachers’ perceptions of the sources of their occupational stress, the strategies they employed to cope with their perceived stress, and the support they accessed and/or needed to alleviate stress. Ten early career teachers with up to five years of teaching experience working in a Chinese urban secondary school took part in this study. Data were generated using semi-structured individual interviews. The findings showed that the participants experienced a number of stressors, particularly in relation to workload pressures, meeting professional expectations, student behaviour management, and aspects unique to the Chinese context such as the role of a class supervisor, preparing for professional rank evaluation, and the strong emphasis on students’ academic scores. The study indicated that the early career teachers recognised the importance of mentoring and collaborative learning among colleagues in the school as strategies to mitigate stress. The participants also expressed a desire for increased remuneration, realistic expectations on students’ academic scores, an increase in the status of vocational education, the implementation of ‘qualityoriented education,’ and more parental involvement in children’s learning. While this study highlighted ways that could support Chinese early career teachers to reduce occupational stress, it is also suggested that there is still much to attend to in terms of policy, practice, and further research.