Teacher stress and cognitive style

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between the teacher's cognitive style and occupational stress. A sample of 212 teachers in Maltese secondary schools completed a questionnaire surveying both the level of overall stress and the severity of four major areas of job stress. They were also given the Cognitive Styles Analysis which assesses two fundamental dimensions of cognitive style, wholist-analytic and verbal-imagery. For the top and bottom 25 per cent of the sample with extreme style characteristics, self-reported teacher stress was not related to style in a simple manner. However, style interacted significantly with teacher age. With regard to the four major areas of occupational stress, significant variations in the levels of stress were observed with style: whereas Analytics reported greater stress than Wholists for 'pupil misbehaviour' and 'poor working conditions', the converse was true for 'poor staff relations' and 'time pressures'.