W hen considering the impacts of educational change and teaching on teachers, there is encountered a vast, often vaguely defined and overlapping literature on such matters as teacher stress, teacher burnout , teacher morale, teacher satisfaction and teacher motivation; a literature which has expanded commensurately with educational innovation and change in the period since the 1960s. Frequently these matters are also the subject of debate and discussion in the public arena, the media, in election campaigns and in teachers' salary disputes. Stress and its effective management are high on the agenda of many primary and secondary schools in Britain today. It has been identified as a major problem in nine out of ten workplaces (Warren and Towl, 1995), leading to rising absenteeism and low morale among staff. This is particularly true of schools. A raft of legislation, resulting from the Education Reform Act 1988, has advocated a locally managed approach to school governanance as part of reform strategies intended to lead to improved student learning outcomes. Subsequent legislation (the Education Acts of 1992, 1993 and 1994) and amendments of the National Curriculum have meant that schools have been going through a period of continual governmentally imposed change. As a result of the 1992 Act all schools are also subject to inspection once every six years. The consequence of all this change is best summed up by the head teacher of an infants' school in the study: My post as head teacher of an infant school has changed dramatically since the passing of the 1988 Education Act. Political legislation has transformed the nature and scale of my work, minimising my training experience whilst thrusting me rapidly forward into budgeting, computing, site management, risk management, etc,-untrained and inexperienced. Perspective on stress In many countries teaching has been identified as one of the most stressful occupations. Studies in the United Kingdom have found typical rates of approximately one-third of teachers surveyed who have reported their job as stressful or extremely stressful (Kyriacou, 1987; Gold and Roth, 1993).
This eight-year cross-sectional study measured the self-esteem, reading and mathematical attainments of eight cohorts of Year 2 andYear 6 children over the period of the introdu ction of the N ational C urriculum and assessment procedures into primary schools (the ® rst cohort was pre-national curriculum: the others were post-national curriculum). A ll Year 2 (N 5 1513) and Year 6 children (N 5 1488) in ® ve randomly selected primary schools within one Local Education Authority (LE A) comprised the sample to which the Lawseq questionnaire (Lawrence, 1982), M athematics 7 or 11 (National Foundation for E ducational Research, 1985Research, , 1987a and The Primary Reading Test Level 1 or 2 (F rance, 1981) was adm inistered. Self-esteem means for Year 2 shows a downward trend in the ® rst 4 years of the study followed by an upward trend in the second half of the study with the mean of C ohort 8 being slightly below that of Cohort 1. Self-esteem means for Year 6¯uctuated for the ® rst 5 years followed by a steady rise until the mean for Cohort 8 is 2.17 above that of Cohort 1. An analysis of variance showed there were signi® cant differences between both years groups with cohorts focused around the introdu ction of the national tests having signi® cantly different scores than other cohorts (Y ear 2 signi® cantly lower: Year 6 signi® cantly higher). Overall, there were signi® cant positive correlations between the children' s self-esteem and all their attainment scores. W hen the correlation coef® cients were computed separately for the pre-and post-national test groups differences emerged. There were no signi® cant correlations for the Year 2 pre-national test cohorts but for the post-national test groups all the correlations were signi® cant. For Year 6 all correlations were signi® cant. Discussion centres on the possible link between national testing and self-esteem.
The attitudes of Year 2 boys and girls drawn from six randomly selected primary schools within one local education authority (LEA) towards school and school activities were measured using the 38 item 'Smiley' instrument. The same measure was given to the same children 2 years later to explore the effect of experience on infant children's attitudes. Using sex and occasions as the independent variables, a repeated measures two-way analysis of variance was performed for each of the items. The results showed a significant interaction between sex and occasion on three items-'doing mathematics' (girls became significantly more negative), 'reading to the teacher' and 'writing poems' (boys became significantly less happy). Boys and girls differed in their attitudes to several school activities consistently and significantly. The results are discussed in the light of other research into gender and school subject preferences.
The attitudes of Year 2 boys (388) and girls (364) drawn from ® ve randomlyselected primary schools within one Local Education Authority (LEA) towards school and school activities were measured using the`Smiley' instrument. The same measure was given to the children 4 years later to explore the effect of experience on infant children's attitudes. Using sex and occasion as the independent variables, a repeated measures two-way analysis of variance was performed for each of ® ve scale scores plus the total score. Between Years 2 and 6 the sample became signi® cantly more negative towards the curriculum, interaction with the teacher and discipline (at the 0.001% level) and happier about interacting with peers (at the 0.5% level). While the boys were signi® cantly more negative towards the curriculum on both occasions, the girls' negativity grew faster in the junior years and was catching up with the boys' mean score by Year 6.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.