Occupational stress and burnout: A study of teachers in special and general schools

Pages: 1274-1277
Hardeep Kaur and Laddi Singh (Department of Social Work, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab)

Appropriate teaching skills are a significant part of a teacher’s job. Even special educators are also required to create an atmosphere, flexible enough to cover varied needs of their students. For the effective performance it is important to take into account the psychological well being of the teachers or else they may experience both stress and burnout. This paper outlines the level of occupational stress and burn out amongst the teachers in general and special school. A total of twenty five teachers each were taken up from the special schools and the sample from general schools selected were matched on age and gender. Self constructed interview schedule was used to collect data on socio demographic profile of the teachers, Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach & Jackson, 1981) and The Occupational Stress Index (Srivastava & Singh, 1981) were used. The results showed that under burn out, Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization were found to be significantly higher among teachers in special school and personal accomplishment was found to be lower. Scores on occupational stress indicated significant differences in the following sub scales of, i.e., role overload, unreasonable group and political pressure, responsibility of persons, unprofitability.