How Should Stressors Be Examined in Teachers? Answering Questions about Dimensionality, Generalizability and...

Area of Science:

• Educational Psychology
• Occupational Health Psychology

Background:

• Teacher stress is a significant issue impacting educators' well-being and effectiveness.
• Existing measures of teacher stressors may lack robust structural validity or cross-gender invariance.
• Understanding the relationship between stressors and psychological functioning is crucial for developing targeted interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the optimal factorial structure of the Multicontext Stressors Scale (MSS) for measuring teacher stressors.
• To assess the gender invariance of the MSS factorial structure.
• To examine how different teacher stressors predict psychological functioning, guided by self-determination theory.

Main Methods:

• Survey data collected from 584 secondary school teachers.
• Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the factorial structure of the MSS.
• Structural equation modeling was employed to test the predictive relationships between stressors and psychological needs.

Main Results:

• The six-factor structure of the MSS demonstrated superior fit compared to a one-factor structure.
• The factorial structure of the MSS was found to be invariant across gender.
• Student misbehavior, lack of shared decision-making, and workload stressors were negatively associated with teachers' basic psychological needs.

Conclusions:

• A multifactorial and gender-invariant scale is essential for accurately assessing teacher stressors.
• Basic psychological needs play a critical role in teachers' overall psychological functioning.
• School leaders should prioritize addressing stressors related to student behavior, decision-making, and workload to support teacher well-being.