A Review on Stress And Special Education Teachers

Abstract: Stress manifests itself through different degrees of intensity and frequency. It has been
noticed that the burnout occurs more and more often with people that work in fields involving
human relationships. It affected people who become emotionally involved and invest a great deal
of psychological and physical effort into their work. We aimed to systematically review studies
that examine factors of affecting stress among special education teachers. There are many factors
that can affect stress. Besides, we emphasized the prevention of the stress. There were at least 25
articles reviewed. The related journal articles on stress were downloaded with cut off limit from
2004 to 2014. The articles were then analyzed and organized according to the definitions of
stress, various factor affecting stress to special education teachers and the prevention to the
stress. Finally, with conclusion we then suggest for future interventional study.
Keywords: stress, stress prevention, special education, teacher
1. Introduction
The educational system today requests visionary grasp and future-oriented education,
while this trend also imposes a physical and psychological pressure on those activating in this
field. This situation cause the teaching field physically and mentally challenging. A teacher
needs to use a lot of energy in his daily chores in the classroom coupled with his personal and
family commitments. Teachers generally experience a higher level of job related stress compared
with professionals in other fields (Hastings and Brown 2002, Nagel and Brown 2003, Brown and
Nagel 2004; Aremum, 2010). If teaching, according to these scholars, is stressful, teaching
exceptional or special needs individuals could be more stressful owing to the peculiar nature of
the learners and their different learning difficulties.
Special education teachers are among the most stressed in the teaching profession. Stress
appears to be especially evident for teachers working in inclusive settings and special classes
within mainstream schools (Forlin, 2001; Vlachou and Barton, 1994; Antoniau et al. 2009).
Special education teachers have higher levels of anxiety, feel less supported and have lower job
satisfaction than their contemporaries (Hastings and Brown, 2002; Aremum, 2010) . This is due
to huge workload, emotional/ psychological pressures, especially in dealing with pupils with
various degrees of disabilities, and a high level of frustration experienced by teachers (Aremum,
2010).
Special needs teachers, suffer extreme psychological trauma because people do not
understand why a highly talented individual should engage or be involved in teaching
exceptional children, especially the disabled individuals. In fact, when special education teachers
are severely stressed by the unmanageability of their workload, they are more likely to leave the
special education classroom (Miller, Brownell, & Smith, 1995; Ghani, Ahmad, & Ibrahim,
2014). Therefore, we aimed to systematically review the literature about stress, factors affecting
and the prevention of stress. It is essential that special education teachers that dealing with
special needs students recognize the importance of the prevention of depression so that necessary
actions can be taken. We first reviewed on the definitons of stress, next is the factors affecting
and the prevention of how to manage the stress. At last, we suggest for future studies.
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2. Material and Methods

2.1. Material
There were at least 25 articles reviewed. Of 25 articles there were 13 articles on stress
among special education teachers. The articles were empirical and meta-analysis review on the
factors affecting stress among special education teachers in the school and a way to prevent
stress.
2.2. Procedure
The articles were mainly downloaded using Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
subscribed data based. Sciencedirect was the frequently used. In addition, Google scholar was
also employed. The related journal articles on stress among special education teachers in school
downloaded with cut off limit from 2004 to 2014 only. The downloaded articles were then
summarized and organized in the following sections.
3. Result
First, the downloaded articles were analyzed on definition of stress. Second, they were on
various factors of affecting stress among special education teachers. Third on prevention of the
stress were reviewed.
3.1 Definitions of stress
The word Stress is defined as the status of psychological upset or disequilibrium in the
human being caused by frustration conflict and other internal as well as external strain and
pressures. Stress, in general, is the reaction of person in order to adapt to the stimulus causing
physical or mental requirements. Despite the prevalence of stress among teachers, its importance
has been stressed because teachers react differently to stress. In spite of resources causing stress,
the degree of stress a person experiences, depends to some extent on their ability to deal with
stress as well as their perception of stress related resources and dominant climate (Mohammadi
& Youzbashi, 2012)
Stress has been realised as the reaction of the body of every person to physical and psychological factors which impact on that person (Kaiser and Polezynski 1982; Mapfumo et al.,
2014). Stress can be defined as a physical, emotional or mental reaction resulting from ones
response to certain pressures in the environment and how well one can manage those pressures
(Borg, Riding and Falzon, 1991); Aremum, 2010). Onyemerekeya (1996), perceives stress as the
reaction or response within an individual that occurs when some kinds of external events threaten
him.
In the same vein, Gordon (1991) observes that stress refers to a psychological and
physiological state that results when certain features of an individuals environment, including
noise, pressure, job promotions, monotony, or the general climate attack or impinge on that
person. The discourse on stress has also been undertaken from a number of angles ranging from
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the conceptual understanding of stress, to its causes, effects and its management once it has
reached uncomfortable levels (Selye 1974, Ivancevich and Matteson 1980; Hubert 1984; Dollard
2001; Mapfumo et al. 2012; Mapfumo et al. 2014).
Lazarus and Folkman (1984) in (Alizadegani, Fitriana, & Delavari, 2014) emphasize the
theory of stress on two things; the production of stressor and the individuals response subjected
to the stressor. These two processes lead to Cognitive Appraisal theory. They explain that stress
is a psychological and physical response to the stimuli that alters the bodys equilibrium. They
further stated that stress is the result of cognitive appraisal towards the stimuli or event. This
cognitive appraisal itself is the result of the two combinations of emotion and physiological
arousal. Aamodt (2007) argued that stress occurs when physiological and physical reaction
produce respond to certain life events or stimuli (Alizadegani et al., 2014).
3.2 Factors affecting stress
The current century seems to be the century of stress and intension. People from different
age group and social statuses seem to be stricken by the stress. Stress is a ubiquitous affective
factor that is present in all contexts and in work places (Motallebzadeh, Ashraf, & Yazdi, 2014).
Sagone & Caroli, (2014) found that special needs teachers would report higher levels of
emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and lower levels of personal accomplishment than
volunteers. The causes of stress may include lack of support from the school leadership, conflicts
in cooperating with colleagues increased workload, students with behavioural problems, problem
in the parentteacher relationship and lack of autonomy (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2009; Rad &
Nasir, 2010). Similarly, teachers in private language school, feel more successful in their
profession are more likely to cope with different source of stresses such as job insecurity, work
overload, students low motivation (Motallebzadeh et al., 2014). Furthermore, high levels of
occupational stress also associated with job dissatisfaction, absenteeism and work turnover
(Billingsley and Cross, 1993; Antoniau et al. 2009).
Some well-organised schools ironically stress teachers by lacking the appropriate
flexibility which teachers need in their work. Some changes in societies also stress teachers such
as the relative decline in the status of the teacher in developed countries with the decline in the
pay packets of the teacher both at school level and in universities (Dworkin 2001; Mapfumo et
al., 2014). Ghani et al., (2014) clarify that there are five major factors that contribute to stress
among special education teachers in Penang Malaysia. The factors are pupil misbehavior,
teachers workload, time and resources difficulties, recognition and interpersonal relationships.
The authors also indicates that there is no significant difference of work stress among the
respondent based on gender, marriage status, and highest academic qualification.
For pupil misbehavior, the authors reveals that the most significant cause of stress is
pupils reluctance to follow instruction, pupils impolite behavior, and handling problematic
pupils such as autism and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) who are refuse to
follow instruction and unable to sit still is very challenging and stressful. The results by Aremum
(2010) revealed that special needs children with more than a single disability can cause stress,
severe disability can create problem for the teachers. The integration of students and continuous
responsibility for students lead to stress. It is a known fact that coping with students without
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disability may sometimes portend stress not to talk of an inclusive setting where special needs
pupils are mixed with the regular students. The different needs and conditions may wear teachers
out, more especially when the population is too large for reasonable accommodation by
specialized teachers.
The present study reveals that responsibility for pupils to be successful in examination
and able to behave like normal students were the main workload that contributed to teacher
stress. Administrative work, attending workshop, stock and inventory, and too much work in one
time also the characteristics of workload. The least significant workload was attending courses,
seminars, and workshops to improve teaching skills and knowledge. This finding is confirmed by
Kyriacou and Sutcliffe (1979) as quoted by Antoniou (2000) that condition of work seems to
provide stress factors which most strongly contribute to job dissatisfaction and burnout among
workers.
Next, for time and resources difficulties factor, the most significant stress factor is having
a multiple disabilities of students, followed by difficulty in completing syllabus in the time
available, and lack of material resources in meeting new educational basis. Teachers may feel
inadequate when they need to balance their responsibilities with shortage of resources and
equipment such as libraries, supportive technologies, resource banks in order to meet the
different needs of each pupil, which may lead to high levels of stress and low self-esteem
(Antoniau et al. 2009).
Besides that, for the recognition factor, the study by Aremum (2010) reveals that lack of
recognition work from administrator was the main stressor that contributed to teacher stress. This
followed by poor promotion prospects and lack of encouragement to work better from
administrators. The potential stressors may include the lack of parental and administrative
support (Blase, Blase, & Du, 2008, Lambert et al., 2006; Fisher, 2011), and the lack of task
management for new teachers when dealing with paperwork and extracurricular duties outside
the classroom (Brown, 2005; Fisher, 2011). These tasks can include parent conferences, bus
monitoring, hallway duty, staff meetings, bathroom duty, cafeteria supervision, and a plethora of
other tasks assigned to teachers. Favoritisme appears to be related to this, in the sense that
teachers who have close personal relationships with head teachers are often favored against
others (Antoniau et al. 2009).
Lastly, the stress factor discover by Aremum (2010) are interpersonal relationships which
the teacher received unclear instruction from the administrator, followed by observation by
education officers and lack of colleagues cooperation in conducting an activity especially from
normal education teacher. Bataineh and Alsagheer (2012) in Aremum (2010) also studied the
influence of some sources of social support (that is, supervisors, colleagues, friends, partner, or
family) on the reduction of burnout syndrome in a sample of special education teachers, noticing
positive correlations between family and colleagues support and personal accomplishment,
without differences for sex, age, marital status, and teaching experiences (Sagone & Caroli,
2014).
The results by Antoniau et al. (2009) also emphasize that there are five key of stress,
which are loading mainly onto the domains of working conditions, workload, and organisational
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problems, which appear to have an impact on teachers of Special Educational Needs students in
Greece. The study by Mapfumo, Mukwidzwa, & Chireshe (2014) revealed that special needs
education (SNE) teachers were stressed by perceived lack of government support, lack of
resources and heavy workload, and time spent on individual pupils for those in Special Needs
Education.
According to Forlin 2001; Antoniou et al. 2009, they have classified teacher stressors
into three general clusters: administrative, such as heavy workload, role overload and role
conflict, role ambiguity, time/resource difficulties, classroom-based, such as classroom climate,
high ratio between teacher-pupils, limited progress of pupils with an emphasis on pupils
disruptive behaviors) and personal such as poor collaboration with colleagues, poor working
environment, external locus of control, insufficient salary and low social status. Meanwhile,
Yazhuan, Qing, & Yugui, (2010) express five distinct dimensions of perceived stress; teaching
workload (34% common variance), school system (11% common variance), social treatment and
demands (7% common variance) and self-development demands (6% common variance), school
hardware facilities (5% common variance).
3.3 Prevention of stress
A teachers with a greater experience in education and recuperating children with special
needs activate coping strategies more often alert, problem-oriented status, while those with less
professional experience resort significantly more often to expressing emotions (emotionsoriented coping strategies) (Folotin & Tudorache, 2012). The simple tactics can also help a
teacher to control stress such as balanced diet, exercise, adequate sleep, as well as being able to
recognize work overload and stress-resistant workplaces (Sorenson 1999; Fisher, 2011).
Main stress management methods included sharing problems with colleagues, physical
exercise, cheering with family and friends. Suggested system-wide improvements to reduce
stress included provision of more resources, reduction of class size and better remuneration
(Mapfumo et al., 2014). The use of prayer also can be an important stress management tool
especially interesting in that it is possible that Special Needs Education teachers saw working
with children with disabilities as the will of God. If this is correct, it is sad that these very
dedicated, empathic, idealistic and people-oriented professionals have been found to be the ones
most vulnerable to stress and the ones likely to leave the profession (Cherniss 1980, Pines et al.
1981; Mapfumo et al., 2014).
Fisher (2011) stated that the most popular methods of combating stress are positive peer
collaboration, better mentoring for new teachers, and more effective professional development.
Aremum (2010) suggested that there should be immediate review of condition of service,
provision of adequate instructional facilities, proactive approach to service delivery, and training
and retraining of special educators to meet the immediate needs and challenges of the various
special needs of children. Antoniau et al. (2009) found that the key coping strategies applied
special education needs (SEN) teachers are active (involvement and task) strategies, for example,
taking steps to try to remove or circumvent the stressors or to ameliorate its effects. The active
strategies include looking for the ways to make the work more interesting, re-organizing the
work, and setting priorities.
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There are three strategies for coping with stress to professional area, private relationships,
life attitude and health. According to Hennig and Keller (1996); (Vereov & Mal, 2012), there
are three strategies for coping with stress: 1) decrease of stress situations throughout the work
day; 2) reduction of emotional excitement appearing together with stress and 3) change of way of
dealing with stress situations, which the individual cant influence. The research by Vereov &
Mal (2012) clarifiy that relations between teachers stress and teachers personal features
related to coping with load proactive coping and self- efficacy of teachers.
A model of stress prevention and coping visually represent the use of preventive coping
skills in a stressful situation, known as demands (McCarthy et al. 2002; Fisher, 2011). This
model is shown in Figure 1. The model begins with preventive coping resources and the dashed
lines from that variable indicate the individual can control the degree of demands from life
events, individual perceptions they have about demands encountered, and their own appraisal of
the ability to handle demands. Once the demand has become apparent, the individual must
appraise the seriousness of the demand. Optimal results would be those in which the individual
feels the resources available outnumber the demands (RD), but the reverse can also occur
(R<D), which triggers the aforementioned stress response. If this occurs, combative coping
mechanisms must be reinforced to reduce the intensity of the stressors.

Figure 1: Model of prevention of stress and coping (McCarthy, Lambert, Beard, & Dematatis,
2002; Fisher, 2011)
There are differences between coping mechanisms used by young teachers and
experienced teachers, from prevalent positive techniques (as anticipation and social coping)
which help an adaptive or constructive coping strategies to avoiding strategies (as disangament at
mental and behavioral level) (Folotin & Tudorache, 2012). The presence of abstaining in the
young teachers coping strategies can be consider that the avoiding style is built in time because
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of system constraints. Planning (thinking about how to confront the stressor, planning one's
active coping efforts) as an active coping technique of experienced teachers is the key of
explaining the adaptative mechanism of avoidance/decommitment.
4. Conclusion
To conclude, stress is part of lives, but it is not necessarily bad for teachers. Teachers are
responsible for the education of society and in that sense the quality of the teachers can indirectly
shape the future direction that their country goes in. The profession of teacher does have its fair
share of job stress and pressure likewese special education teachers. They faced various types of
ability and handicapped of the students in their job area. The central factor in determining the
teachers stress is represented by too many demands and responsibilities assigned to them, and
especially by their ambiguity on the professional role.
The most typical trigger to the stress response is the perception that ones' coping
resources are inadequate for handling life demands. Stress allows our biological system to
prepare itself to do something; either attack (fight) or run away (flight). Too little stress results in
boredom and stagnation and too much stress will eventually affects our mental and physical
health and lowers the job satisfaction. The most typical trigger to the stress response is the
perception that ones' coping resources are inadequate for handling life demands.
As a result of differences in definition, there is no consensus on the incidence of stress or
on trends over time. There is a need for researchers to agree upon how best to define and
measure stress and to reach consensus on comparable use. Research that distinguishes more
carefully among causes of stresss and levels of stress would make it possible to monitor the
existing of stress and a way to manage stress in a more standardized manner.
Programs of stress management should help teachers set realistics standards for
themselves. Sadly, many of the stress management techniques on offer simply aren't practical in
a school setting. More research could be undertaken into the effectiveness a program to handling
with stress. Improvement is needed in working conditions, professional status, public support
and compensation. In the meantime, school systems should provide teachers with environments
and programs of support to help them cope with the high levels of stress they continue to
experience. This study thus has filled in a small gap of literature on the stress among special
education teachers, a factor affecting and a way to overcome the stress.
5. Recommendations
This study makes a number of recommendations. At school system and government level
there is need for the improvement of conditions under which teachers work particularly to reduce
or eliminate the thoughts of teachers running away from their positions. There is need for the
government to motivate teachers of special needs children and increase their physical and
psychological satisfaction regarding their jobs. There is also need for the government to address
the issues of large classes and the concomitant heavy workloads. For the teachers in Special
Needs Education the issue of providing them with support staff to carry some of the workload is
vital. Also the program of training and retraining teachers should be done regularly to meet
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societal demands as well as holistic needs of special needs children (physical, psychological,
medical and intellectual.)
The study recommends further research in the area which should be done country wide
taking into consideration the demographic characteristics of the participating teachers such as
gender, age, professional qualification and teaching experience.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank UTM Library and our lecturer PM Dr Yahya bin Buntat and PM Dr
Khata bin Jabor.

Table 1. A Summary on Stress and the Prevention of stress

No Author
Sources
Type of
Stress in teaching
article
1.
Ghani, Ahmad, &
Procedia - Social Emperical Factors affect to
Ibrahim, 2014)
and Behavioral
stress
8

Findings
Support

2.

Aremum, 2010

3.

Mohammadi &
Youzbashi, 2012

4.

Fisher, 2011

5.

Folotin &
Tudorache, 2012

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Sciences
New Horizons in
Education,
Procedia - Social
and Behavioral
Sciences
Current Issues in
Education

Procedia - Social
and Behavioral
Sciences
Antoniou A.S,
International
Polychroni F. &
Journal Of
Christina Kotroni,
Special
2009
Education
Rad & Nasir, 2010
Procedia Social
and Behavioral
Sciences
Motallebzadeh,
Procedia - Social
Ashraf, & Yazdi, 2014 and Behavioral
Sciences
Vereov & Mal,
Procedia - Social
2012
and Behavioral
Sciences
Mapfumo,
International
Mukwidzwa, &
Journal
Chireshe, 2014
Education
Science
Sagone & Caroli, 2014 Procedia - Social
and Behavioral
Sciences
Yazhuan et al., 2010.
Procedia - Social
and Behavioral
Sciences
Alizadegani et al.,
Procedia - Social
2014
and Behavioral
Sciences

Emperical Suggestion

Support

Emperical Definition of stress

Factors influencing
stress

Support

Emperical Factors influencing

stress
Coping stress
Emperical Coping stress

Support

Emperical Factors related to

stress
Coping stress

Support

Emperical Factors affect to

stress

Support

Emperical Factors affect to

stress

Support

Emperical Coping stress

Support

Emperical Definition of stress

Coping stress

Support

Emperical Factors affect to

stress

Support

Emperical Factors affect to

stress

Support

Emperical Definition of stress

Support

Support

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