Teacher stress: Balancing demands and resources

Abstract

Teacher stress takes a measurable toll the teaching workforce, as many teachers become burned out and decide to leave the profession. Christopher McCarthy explains that stress is a psychological process that results from how teachers appraise the balance between the demands in their classrooms and the resources they have to meet those demands. Understanding this imbalance may provide avenues for intervention for those 20-25% of teachers most vulnerable to stress. Such interventions include upstream structural efforts to calibrate demands across the school to better suit each teacher’s capacity and more targeted interventions aimed at teachers who are most at risk of stress.