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COPING WITH STRESS IN SITUATION OF CRITICS AT PRIMARY EDUCATION TEACHERS

Iwona Czaja-Chudyba

Abstract

Stressful situations are inevitably connected with teachers profession. They may be caused by dissatisfaction from work results, problems with pupils, inter-personal contacts and professional burnout. Important reason for stress may also be critics – from pupils, pedagogical supervision, parents and other teachers. Such critics constitutes the factor significantly demolishing authority and being in the teachers role. Teachers cope with the stress in a different manner, taking an attitude of openness, aggression or avoidance. In theoretical part there will be presented the types of accepting, giving the meaning and acting in situation of critics, styles and conceptions of coping with stress as well as some selected conditions from the literature (sense of coherence). The aim of investigations was to determine the relationship between the coping style, level of sense of coherence and method of accepting the critics. There was formulated the hypothesis about positive correlation between the openness for critics, style task of coping and high level of coherence (perception of sense, meaning and possessing the sources for coping with critics). Research group included 211 of primary education teachers. For conducted investigations there were used psychological tests (CISS - Endler and Parker, Sense of Coherence Questionnaire by Antonovsky) and Author’s Questinnaire for coping in critics situation. Results indicated relationship between style task of coping, high level of coherence and open acceptance of critics as well as coping style based on avoidance with critics displacement. There was also determined that for teachers the most representative behavioural pattern in situation of critics is not recognizing and avoiding it. It was concluded that the most stressful for teachers is critics from pupils and in such cases majority of teachers react in avoidance, but they do accept the critics from education authorities. It is characteristic that in research group no teacher described the case of self-critical, self-reflective estimation of action results which means that such situation does not constitute for teachers the source of stress. Results indicated low preparation at teachers for mature, open and task critics acceptance, poor coping with critics and low level of self-critical competencies.

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