Cognitive coping skills, self-efficacy and work variables. Guidelines for preventing stress of teachers

Abstract

Teachers often face a variety of stressful situations at their work that may come to threaten their psychological well being. The so-called coping strategies are responses to a stressful situation implemented to try to manage or neutralize it. We analyze the relationship between cognitive coping strategies, self-efficacy, and job variables in a sample composed by 413 teachers. The evaluation was conducted through a questionnaire with 3 different stressful situations, as well as items of the Brief COPE, the CERQ, and other items designed to assess cognitive coping. Self-efficacy was evaluated asking the teachers to what extent they feel able to cope with each situation of stress successfully. The job variables evaluated were: type of school, educational level, and usefulness of received training to face this kind of situations. The results show that teachers of public schools use more the strategies of Pessimistic Passivity and Obsessive Self-Reference than those teachers of private schools. Teachers of Infant and Primary Education use more the Rational Planning when they face problems of students’ behavior, and also use less Pessimistic Passivity when they are work overloaded, than teachers of Secondary Education. We also found significant differences in Pessimistic Passivity and Rational Planning according to the level of efficacy perceived. Finally, those who consider more useful their training use fewer strategies like Pessimistic Passivity and Obsessive Self-Reference. The results suggest the importance of adequate the interventions to prevent teachers stress to their educative level of teaching and to the kind of school in which their work. Also the results point out that it is necessary to design trainings of quality for teachers that became useful for their daily work and make them feel with much more efficacy.