Stress at School? A Qualitative Study on Illegitimate Tasks during Teacher Training

Abstract

What do I expect when stating that “I am going to be a teacher”? Social roles, including professional roles, often become part of people's identity and thus, of the self. As people typically strive for maintaining a positive sense of self, threats to one's role identity are likely to induce stress. In line with these considerations, Semmer et al. recently (e.g., Semmer et al., 2007, 2015) introduced “illegitimate tasks” as a new concept of stressors. Illegitimate tasks, which are defined as unnecessary or unreasonable tasks, threaten the self because they signal a lack of appreciation regarding one's professional role. Teacher training is a phase of role transition in which the occurrence of illegitimate tasks becomes likely. A holistic understanding of these tasks, however, has been missing up to now. Is there already a professional role identity during teacher training that is vulnerable to threats like the illegitimacy of tasks? What are typical illegitimate tasks in the context of teacher training? In order to close this research gap, 39 situations taken from 16 interviews with teaching trainees were analyzed in the present study on the basis of qualitative content analysis. Seminars and standing in to hold lessons for other teachers were identified as most prevalent illegitimate tasks. More specifically, unnecessary tasks could be classified as sub challenging, inefficient and lacking in organization (e.g., writing reports about workshops no one will ever read). Unreasonable tasks appeared overextending, fell outside responsibility, and lacked supervisory support. Training interventions focusing upon task design and supervisory behavior are suggested for improvement.

Teacher’s sleep quality: linked to social job characteristics?

“…Palmer et al reported effects on disturbed sleep by a lack of support from colleagues28 ) . Whereas the supervisor might be specifically important during teacher training, support by the supervisor might be less important for fully trained teachers2 ) . Future studies should account for social support by colleagues as effects might be different.…”

“…In a recent longitudinal cohort study of 4,988 Finnish teachers, Gluschkoff and colleagues found workplace violence (as a direct adverse social job characteristic) to disturb sleep – especially, if teachers perceived the managerial practices to be less fair 35 . Schoolmaster training in resource-oriented leadership should add to a work climate in which people feel free to mention problems and to seek support2 ) . Longitudinal research recently showed full mediation of the stressor-strain link by perseverative thoughts and a bidirectional stressor-strain relation, i.e., impaired sleep quality predicts increase in work stressors36 ) .…”

“…Cognitive-behavioural online sleep training intervention in teachers (including mindfulness training) was proven to be effective in increasing sleep quality after work41 ) . During education of teaching students, threats to the self associated with teaching tasks should be explicitly addressed2 ) . Emotional labour in teaching (mainly comprising the emotional dissonance that results from showing positive emotions while hiding felt negative ones) is another key intervention focus that seems to be uniquely related to senior teachers’ self-reports of their ability to work until retirement3 ) .…”

“…Despite this, social job characteristics can be an important source of stress1 ) . Beside dealing with high workload, being a teacher is challenging with respect to the social context including caregiving, emotion management and a lack of supervisor support2, 3, 4 ) . Adverse work conditions are called work stressors since they increase the likelihood that employees will experience stress and, thus, carrying the risk to impair health and well-being1 ) .…”

“…Individuals are also strongly motivated by the desire for positive self-evaluation and positive evaluation by others, and this is negatively impacted by social exclusion22 ) . Accordingly, threats to social esteem play a major role in the experience of stress (e.g., in the concept of ‘Stress as Offense to Self’)2 ) . By thwarting belonging and self-esteem goals, workplace social exclusion promotes a variety of negative emotions (e.g., anxiety) as well as several psychological and somatic health complaints21 ) .…”