Stress and Coping Mechanisms among High School Teaching Professionals

Stress is a common human condition in private and public life. Good stress is that strain or pressure that energises human being to rise to their higher levels of exertion or creativity. But stress can be bad in the sense that it can cause such strain in the human being that it leads to a feeling of being overwhelmed and sometimes to outright illness and death. Stress at its various levels is always part of the occupational condition of humans. The world over, but more so in advanced countries, the teaching profession has been found to be stressful compared to jobs that require the same qualifications and experience. In developing countries much less work has been done on teacher stress and in the general and working populations. The quality of education delivered by teachers is to a good extent dependent on how stressed the teachers feel and how they cope with their stressed condition. This study therefore, sought to establish the stress levels felt by teachers in high schools (deemed the most stressful part of the education system for teachers in other countries). The factors of stress were also identified and compared for men and women and so were the coping mechanisms.