Introduction

Most of the school teachers suffer from occupational stress that has direct bearing on the effectiveness of teaching and student-teacher relationship in our educational system. No major effort has so far been made to conduct a systematic study on the occupational stress among  teachers, especially the lady teachers who are over burdened with house hold activities and classroom activities.

Teacher stress may be defined as "the experience by a teacher of unpleasant emotions such as tension, frustration, anxiety, anger and depression resulting from aspect of his or her work as a teacher". There are evidences that prolonged occupational stress can participate both mental and and physical ill-health undermine teachers' class room effectiveness. Any serious attempt to increase the quality of working lives must also play attention in teacher stress.

Aspects and Factors.

Teachers experience stress due to their perception of threat based on three aspects of their perception of their circumstances, viz:

1. That demands are being made upon them;
2. That they are unable to meet these demands;
3. That failure to meet these demands threaten their mental or physical well-being.

There are three important factors that cause stress among teachers, viz:

1. A feeling that they are required a high level of demands;
2. A feeling that they are unable to meet a high level of demands;
3. A feeling of being threatened;

Here demands are made either by the authorities or by self imposed standards and threats may be arising from fear of losing their face in their eyes or those of colleagues or of reduced promotion prospects. Most teachers in circumstances which can be identified as 'difficult' will experience stress.

It can be observed that teachers who are very poor in class room performances and are incompetent  to manage both students and curriculum may develop antagonistic attitudes and approaches towards the authorities or institutions or try to get the sympathy from students or colleagues on the strength of so many excuses or complaints.

Personality Traits

Various studies shows that teachers with a belief in external control- a belief that things in their lives are generally outside their control, attributable primarily to luck, fate, powerful, others or essentially unpredictable- are more stress prone.

Sources of Teacher Stress

There are mainly four areas of teacher stress that can be brought under different sources. They are:

Individual teachers differ in their own major sources of stress. Teachers may identify the more salient aspects of their circumstances as sources of stress.

Reduction of Stress

Coping actions used to deal with stress can be grouped into two categories:

Direct action techniques consist of those actions aimed at dealing with a situation that is potentially stressful. For example, if a teacher feels that a particular pupil is being disruptive on a number of occasions, an intervention strategy is used; such as serve punishment, exploratory counselling, seating the pupil at the front of the classroom.

Palliative techniques do not deal with the source of stress itself, but rather aim at reducing the individuals subjective emotional experience of stress. They can be either mental or physical. The mental techniques involve strategies which try to help the teacher perceive the stressful circumstances in a different way, thus reducing the level of perceived threat. Physical techniques involve behaviours aimed at directly at reducing the emotional state and include taking deep breaths to try and relax so as to dissipate the build up of tension.

The degree of social support available in a school is crucial factor in mitigating the level of stress. In service courses for teachers dealing with teacher stress can be introduced.

It need to be noted that many teachers who experience high levels of stress are also very effective teachers. It is some times their high standards and commitment that make them vulnerable to stress. For some teachers the experience of stress undermine their effectiveness. With due professional development of the teachers and adequate school resources and facilities, the problem of teacher stress can be tackled.

Measures must also be taken for improving the competency of teachers and to attract high level professionals in to teaching. Ultimate progress of the society depends on professionally trained and competent teachers. Teachers must also be developed as effective managers of discipline for dealing with confrontations between a teacher and student. The control style of teachers must be modified in order to avoid such confrontations. Interpersonal skills of the teachers need to be developed. Matching the strategy to the context is the best solution to deal with such situation of confrontations.