OCCUPATIONAL STRESS AMONG TEACHERS OF COMMUNITY DAY SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN MALAWI: A MULTI-SITE CASE STUDY

Abstract

Occupational stress, also known as professional stress, job stress, or work-related stress, is an aspect of stress that an employee or a group of workers experience in their workplace. The purpose of this study was to assess occupational stress among community day secondary school teachers. To achieve the aim of this study, four specific objectives were formulated as follows to: determine the patterns of occupational stress among CDSS teachers, assess the sources of occupational stress among CDSS teachers, compare the coping strategies of stress among male and female teachers of CDSS and, explain the effects of occupational stress among CDSS teachers. A mixed research design was used where both qualitative and quantitative data were used, cluster sampling was used to sample schools while simple random sampling was used to selected the respondents and purposive sampling was used to select the key informants. 96 teachers were selected which became the sample of this study. The study findings revealed that a considerable number of teachers experienced stress at the organizational level. The following were identified as sources of occupational stress namely; low salaries (84%), lack of teaching and learning materials (73%) and inadequate training and continuation of education (62%). The most common ways to cope with work-related stress among teachers were exercising and good time management (53%). Most of the teachers emphasised that they listen to music and play soccer as a way of reducing and coping with stress. The study showed that loss of motivation (89%), loss of commitment and confidence (86%), changes in attendance (63%) and poor mental health (57%) were the main effects of occupational stress reported by both male and female teachers. The study recommends that the school administration need to put more caution if there is a teacher who shows stress or depression symptoms by providing earlier counselling session.