Examining the Moderating Impact of Coping Strategies on the Relationship of Stress and Social Support

1. Associate Professor& Dean, Faculty of Computing & Engineering, University of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan 2. Assistant Professor & Chairperson Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan 3. Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan PAPER INFO ABSTRACT Received: May 13, 2020 Accepted: August 25, 2020 Online: September 15, 2020 The current study was conducted with the aims to examine and recognize the complex association among stress among teachers, social support and coping strategies. Based on current and detailed critical literature analysis, the study developed a detailed (social support-coping strategiesteachers’ stress) framework comprising seven twenty items (seven constructs for social support, five constructs for coping strategies and seven constructs for teachers’ stress). The participants of a self-administered survey were asked to assess these variables on a five-point Likert scale. The study obtained 270 valid responses from secondary schools of AJ&K Pakistan to test the proposed relationships and hypotheses. The findings of the current research indicate that social support has a negative and significant impact on teachers’ stress. Further, the study findings also reflect the moderating effect of coping strategies between the relationship of social support and stress among teachers. A well-recognized effect of social support and coping strategies on teachers’ stress and ultimately on teachers and school performance is likely to offer a motivation to policy makers and practitioners to adopt and implement the study recommendations and decrease stress level among school-teachers’ and improve their performance.

The current study was conducted with the aims to examine and recognize the complex association among stress among teachers, social support and coping strategies. Based on current and detailed critical literature analysis, the study developed a detailed (social support-coping strategiesteachers' stress) framework comprising seven twenty items (seven constructs for social support, five constructs for coping strategies and seven constructs for teachers' stress). The participants of a self-administered survey were asked to assess these variables on a five-point Likert scale. The study obtained 270 valid responses from secondary schools of AJ&K Pakistan to test the proposed relationships and hypotheses. The findings of the current research indicate that social support has a negative and significant impact on teachers' stress. Further, the study findings also reflect the moderating effect of coping strategies between the relationship of social support and stress among teachers. A well-recognized effect of social support and coping strategies on teachers' stress and ultimately on teachers and school performance is likely to offer a motivation to policy makers and practitioners to adopt and implement the study recommendations and decrease stress level among school-teachers' and improve their performance.

Introduction
Stress has been denoted as one of the most critical health related issue faced by the current world. This is not only a mental and physical health issue for individuals; moreover, it's a serious concern for governments and employers due to its ability to create financial damages. Seyle (1956) defined stress as: "A neutral physiological phenomenon, in terms of the non-specific response of the human body to any demand". Studies have identified several impacts of occupational stress on employees, firms and governments. These include almost half of the total absentees, around forty percent turnover and around five percent damage in overall production (Ivancevich & Matteson, 1987). Therefore, concerning this it is essential for governments, private firms, policy makers, psychologists, occupational physicians and management executives to realize this issue and to formulate and design policies and guidelines to handle this issue and minimize stress levels. Considering the importance of this issue, the researchers decide to investigate it. This piece of research refers to the stress faced by secondary school teachers in AJ&K. The research also inspects the various sources and the level of stress, the impact of social support on stress and the moderating role of coping strategies to somehow condense the stress faced by teachers.
For last four decades the scholars, researchers and professionals have established their own meaning and belief of stress which is experienced by professionals working across the globe. For instance, during 1960's most of the researchers started to work on findings related to the work life and concerns of teachers. (Chris Kyriacou & Sutcliffe, 1977) suggested that the topics were separated and widened from satisfaction and sources of dissatisfaction on job like "teacher stress" or "stress in teaching", which began to give the impression in the 1970s. The studies on teacher stress are developing since afterwards (Chris Kyriacou, 1987;Liu & Onwuegbuzie, 2012;Madini, 2005;Montgomery & Rupp, 2005). Kyriacou (2001) is one of those researchers who had started to review material on the teacher stress from 1977. By then, the term "teacher stress" started getting attention of media and teacher stress has become an important research topic. For example, in western world like UK, Canada and America stress had got serious level of attention among the researchers (Travers et al., 1996;Younghusband, 2005), and now has amplified to the UAE and other countries which are still in developing stage including Taiwan & Saudi Arabia (Christine & Shu, 2006;Madini, 2005). It has been observed that teacher's stress is a phenomenon that is observed globally, however, still on the basis of certain factors it varies from country to country (Kyriacou, 2001). Multiple studies described that one of the most stressful tasks is one's profession (Dunham, 2002;Chris Kyriacou, 1987;Chris Kyriacou & Sutcliffe, 1977).
The factors that influence stress are uncontrollable by the teachers. Most of them do not have any type of control on the issues that generate and cause the stress in the first place. The teachers therefore are either not willing or they might not have the power to take decision to directly remove the factors. There could be also a possibility that the teachers do not have the required level of confidence to handle the issues. In most of the cases the teachers if try to do so have to confront the administration or the authority that has the power which is rarely seen in cases of school teachers as they have always been disciplined and trained to follow the directions that they have been provided by the administration. Thus, causing them to feel less confident in confronting anyone who has any association or the direct control over the decision that has been taken by the authority. By so far teacher lack such type of confidence and are observed to be weak in response to any policy decision. Moreover, the teachers have been provided with a lot of work that they must perform to show progress of them as compared to their on-job peers. For example, if one of the teachers at the school provides the student with maximum academic support and somehow manages to make the students secure excellent result, he will be praised not just by the school teachers but the community at large causing it a factor of self-respect that is being earned because of his hard work. This is observed as competition by the peers who work in the same organization. It also poses an issue for the teachers that one of the colleagues has found his excellent result, if he had followed the same types of policies that are been implemented by the administration. Though he/she has followed everything it had also have caused stress for him but considering this perspective also suggests that the factors which cause stress for one type of person might not also be observed as stress by others. The notion of viewing this perspective declares that the teachers observe stress differently, they perceive it differently and what might be a stressful job for one could be a challenge for other that he or she finds as an opportunity. The factors that at overall cause dissatisfaction or stress for most of the employee could be extra demands of the administration which do not provide teachers any extra benefits.
As observed in the literature the indirect response to the stress is certainly different and vary from teacher to teacher, though most of them categorize this as same if considered in bundles; for example some of the teachers would like to do overtime for extra monetary benefits to reduce stress after the school hours while some would see this as wasting the leisure time that could be spent with the family and friends. They might value friends and family more than the income. Like that some of the teachers might like to spend extra hours alone in their offices working for the upcoming tasks as they might have more organized behavior of doing their jobs and organizing things beforehand and some might be interested in exploring new academic knowledge about the subject material they teach. Everyone perceives things differently. This different idea of seeing things differently would explain that the teachers might take things at both positive and negative extreme and they also might stay neutral.
Before focusing particularly on Pakistan, the researcher has explored his study on teacher's stress literature available for Pakistan and found lack of material on this topic in context of Pakistan. It was also found that previously there was no study that was conducted in context of Azad Jammu & Kashmir which had any indication of stress faced by teachers, this further made the researchers interested because in case of the experience of research there is a problem unexplored which is stress faced by general and the science teachers. These teachers are challenged by various issues on routine basis that cause stress. These factors are common among most of the teachers across the globe but some of them are typically for the teachers of AJ&K. This study will explore it further.
This study was designed to investigate whether social support and stress level among secondary school teachers are interrelated and social support (coworker, family member, partner, neighbor, community member and friend support) effect the level of stress among school teachers or not? Secondly the study also examined coping strategies as a moderator in the link among social support and stress level among secondary school teachers. Particularly, the researchers assume that high social support would decrease the level of stress among secondary school teachers and low level of social support would increase the level of stress among secondary school teachers. Knowledge regarding the different coping strategies and their effective utilization by the school teachers would lead a moderating impact and will reduce the stress level as well as its consequences.

Linking Social Support and Level of Stress among School Teachers
Several researchers have recognized that unavailability or lower level of social support cause stress among people (Luo & Wang, 2009). The external sources of support like social support have been recognized as a substantial factor in managing stress level among people (Bombardier et al., 1990). Caltabiano and Sarafino (2002) defined concept of social support as level of attention, companionship and kindness received through coworker, family member, partner, neighbor, community member and friends.
During seventies many studies focused on the contribution of social support as a measure to manage stress level among people. Taking social support as a measure means that whenever someone in stress or in threat of stress can get the support of social support network i.e. coworker, family member, partner, neighbor, community member and friend (Calvete & Connor-Smith, 2005). According to Cronkite and Moos (1995) social support is set of social sources that an individual perceives or being recommended.
Most of the stress and social support related studies used perceived social support scale to measure social support variable. Perceived social support is an individual's perception regarding the accessibility of support of social support network as and when needed. This perception identifies perceptive assessment of the adequacy and availability of social support network (25). Perceived social support's key role is that the psychological assessment and expected support assist an individual to trust that he is being judged as a important component of a social network and he is being honored (Thoits, 1995). Social support is utilized as an important mechanism to manage stress levels by the individuals through seeking help of social support network (coworker, family member, partner, neighbor, community member and friends) (Maillet, 2002).
S. W. Cohen recognized social support as a very important situational variable in managing and protecting high stress levels among employees. Safeguarding or suffering from stress concept believes that social support guards individuals from the uncontrolled consequences of stress being experienced (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). An important reason for such perception and trusts is that social support can reduce the effect of stress evaluation by forwarding solutions to stress related problems, lessening the problems perceived significance and sedating the human neuroendocrine system in order to keep individuals calm and less sensitive to perceiving stress. Perceived social support is appearing as an important protective tool against stress (Endo et al., 2014). The concept of social support has been recognized as a fundamental factor in different stress and its consequences theories and concepts (O'Connor, 2011;Van Orden et al., 2005).
The lack or unavailability of social support has been recognized as destructive factor and it was described as a source of increasing stress level to such levels where individuals start thing about suicides (Joiner, 2007). This study further elaborates that social support can act as an effective protecting tool for employees suffering from stress or facing stressful situations. Several researchers have worked on stress and its consequences, specially suicide intentions and recognized the importance and role of different social support network. These studies also pointed out that family support as comparted to peer or coworker support plays a greater role (Czyz et al., 2012;Kerr et al., 2006). Therefore, based upon above mentioned research conclusions and findings we can propose that social support impacts stress level among teachers. To the best of researchers' knowledge empirical investigations regarding this relationship are rare and this relationship needs further investigation. Therefore, we draw hypothesis as:

H1
Social Support has a negative and significant relationship with stress levels among secondary school teachers in Pakistan (i.e. the higher is the availability of perceived social support, lower will be the stress levels among secondary school teachers and vice versa).

Mediating Effect of Coping Strategies between Social Support and Stress
The professional and specialist in the field of health psychology recognize that the personal and social factors influence the response of individuals during stress related conditions and the stress levels caused by an event. Some important personal and social factors identified among people with strong nerves and good psychological health are consistent, hopeful, optimist, creative, tough and capable to attain others support (Lazarus, 1993). Many studies have identified personal coping strategies as an important factor in lowering down the effects of stress levels among employees (Lancastle & Boivin, 2005;Litt et al., 1992;Thorn & Wischmann, 2009). Sil et al. (2014) in his theory identified that success of a coping method adopted by an individual depends upon the nature and duration of the stress encountered. These findings of Dahlquist have been supported by other studies as well (Slifer et al., 2002). The studies have identified that when stress encountered is uncontrollable, the most successful coping strategy as an initial response will be avoiding strategy. These studies also forwarded approaching strategies as more appropriate strategy in chronic situations where individual is required to take measures (Jordan & Revenson, 1999). Jordan and Revenson (1999) identified that women comparatively use more coping strategies.
Several studies identified that the absence of ability to coping can cause high stress (Peterson et al., 2005;Randall & Bodenmann, 2009). The adoption of a coping strategy depends upon an individual personality as well as stressful situation. The studies also identified that different personalities adopt different coping strategies e.g. passive coping strategies and active coping strategies (Roesch et al., 2006;Vollrath & Torgersen, 2000). Some researchers recognized that individual's personality determined his/her response to a stress situation through influencing the loss or threat perception and the related psychological and emotional responses (Folkman & Lazarus, 1984;Semmer, 2006). The personal attributes of an individual determined how an individual experience a stressful situation through the evaluation and coping strategies he/she possesses (Mischel & Shoda, 1998;Smith & Spiro III, 2002).
The psychological and interpersonal theories suggest that adoption and implementation of an effective coping strategy relative to a specific stressful situation can be a significant protecting factor for people. Many studies have recognized the important role of social support networks in managing stress levels among teachers. Among the social support network family support was considered more effective (Czyz et al., 2012;Kerr et al., 2006). Similarly, coping strategies may moderate the link between social support and stress levels among secondary school teachers in Pakistan (Husain et al., 2000). Therefore, relying on above discussions and critical literature analysis we can hypothesize that coping strategies can moderate the influence of social support on stress levels among secondary school teachers in Pakistan. Literature lacks studies on this moderating relationship and current study will clear this relationship as well as add in social support and stress related literature. Hence, we can suppose as under:

H2
The adoption of coping strategies moderates the relationship between social support and stress levels among secondary school teachers in Pakistan.

Research Approach
Different studies suggested that the methodology of research can be derived from three different methods which include quantitative, qualitative and mixed method (Borg & Gall, 1989;G. Hitchcock & Hughes, 1996). These are also described with various other terms like in case of quantitative approach the term is as referred to be traditional, objectivist, conventional, experimental, scientific or positivist. While on the other hand the qualitative is referred to be phenomenological, ethnographic or subjective. Borg and Gall (1989)and Balnaves and Caputi (2001) stated that the in mixed approach the researcher tries to base the claims of knowledge for employing strategies and collecting data. According to Borg and Gall (1989) and Balnaves and Caputi (2001) a mixed approach is an approach in which a researcher forms basic claims of knowledge, employs strategies and collects the data. Each of the approach used by researcher has its own importance. Every research bind to answer questions from different perspectives for example the quantitative research data provides the evidence of basic research and qualitative data on the other hand provides different notion of information which is clearer and with more examples. Yang (2003) and Madini (2005) has explained that for the diversity of these reasons the researchers have developed mixed methodologies for considering data in account. In this research the researcher has adopted a quantitative approach in which he has conducted a survey. In addition to this this study has also tried to describe the level of stress that is being faced by secondary school teachers in Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir and the coping strategies that are used by these teachers. Hitchcock et al. (1995) explained the difference between the techniques and design of research. The former deals with the methods adopted by researchers to collect data and the latter propose the plan or the strategy that the researcher must strictly follow throughout the process of research. The main reason to mention research design is the explanation of logic behind the research that is to be carried out. Therefore, the research design should include the explanation on the ways to extract the sample and elaborate the types of the subgroups that are required and are included in research (Borg & Gall, 1989). Hitchcock et al. (1995) argued that the researchers must develop a clear research design on which entails transparent objective designed in line with the research question. Borg and Gall (1989) also explained the ethical features that are to be considered by a researcher while conducting the research. They also recommended that a researcher must focus on the research design and must develop a brief design in the early stage of research, this is important to be carefully designed in the early stages because based on research design the methodology rests. It elaborates the methods used for sampling, data collection, certain statistical analysis that will be used and the interpretation of results.

Justifications for the Philosophy of Research
According to Borg and Gall (1989) most of the information that we have in shape of a well understood knowledge has been derived by using quantitative research especially in the field of education. Because it numerically allows to classify and analyze the data. The following justification has been given to conduct the research quantitatively. As far as the literature is concerned over the topic of teacher stress, most of the researches have been conducted empirically which involves the collection of quantitative data and was used to figure out the expected relationships that may interact while analyzing the interaction between various variable the example of such sort of research activities can be seen in the work of (Kyriacou, 2001;Madini, 2005;Yang, 2003). This type of research which is based on questionnaires is directed toward finding the relationship between the individuals and organizations which provide a theoretical statement about the study phenomenon under consideration. Quantitative research deals with the establishment of the causal relationship between concepts, in search of cause-effect relationships.
Based on the findings in the literature which have already been discussed the researcher has adopted the quantitative research approach. The researchers have carefully considered the available research material in the field of social sciences especially considering the literature which is available in context of research conducted on teachers. The research questions had also been designed while considering the previous literature. In addition to these the researcher has also considered several types of criticism that has been made on the methodologies for their limitation and the issues related to teacher stress and adopted coping strategies.
The study can both either be longitudinal and transverse. According to Borg and Gall (1989) and Lam et al. (2012)the difference among these two types of study is that in longitudinal study the data collection can be conducted at any point in time while in cross sectional studies, the data collection if performed once. That means the data from the respondents is only retrieved once over the period of research. Based on the conclusion and the answers that a researcher is looking for the data collected by the research questionnaires can be analyzed in number of ways. Cross sectional study most of the time require a survey data collection method. This survey might be descriptive, and this description of data defines the distribution of the items of questionnaire and how the total sample of the population has been distributed for response. According to Borg and Gall (1989) it can also get exploratory as the data might be used to determine the relationship between two different variables. This method would then be nominated as exploratory since it is about to explore the relationship. The research under consideration falls in the category of a cross sectional data research because it has collected the data from the individuals once during the whole research process.

Population of the Study
According to Cohen and Manion (1985) and Langdridge (2007) it is very important to decide on the population for which the survey has been designed. The researchers are trying to explore the characteristics of a broader population by taking in account their representatives as samples to predict the overall characteristics of population. The larger group of individuals which is used for sampling is called population. The samples are the small part of the larger frame of population which represent the population that if the sample shows certain type of behavior the population also would have the same nature of response (Borg & Gall, 1989;Tuckman & Company, 1999). This research has defined its population to be all the teachers teaching at the secondary schools' level of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir. The researchers have taken 309 participants as the sample of this study.
The sample for the current study was taken by using simple random sampling. The population and sample of this study are reflected in table 1. The measurements of the research variables were based on the literature on teacher stress. Therefore, teachers are the most qualified people to provide their answers to the questionnaire and interviews. To comply and address the objectives of the research, the answers and the answers should be taken from the most qualified people who can provide valid answers to the questions.
The reasons behind the choice of AJ&K, and the city of Kotli specifically, as the place to conduct this investigation were, firstly AJ&K is the researchers' country of origin; which means that the researcher can gather the information required for his research without any difficulty with respect to language, cultural differences, time problems, etc. secondly, the researchers also understands all ethical issues related to conducting research at AJ&K. Thirdly, empirical studies in Asian school environments focused on stress in students, principals, librarians and school children (Alghaswyneh, 2012), while some studies focused on other sectors (Alghaswyneh, 2012;Zaid et al., 2011). The researcher reviewed the literature on teacher stress and discovered that no study on stress was conducted. This point illustrates thatKotliAJ&K needs empirical studies that can help decision makers to have useful information to face this critical problem. There are no previous studies on the phenomenon of stress among secondary school teachers in the city ofKotli and in AJ&K, in general.It can be considered the first study.

Data Collection Methods
The term method explains the process or procedure adopted for the collection of data while the methodology provides the explanation of the methods used. There are various methods that can be used for data collection. The data could be collected through questionnaires, interviews, even by observations and file record. The main choice of the methodology depends on the study's nature. It also depends on the research designs and strategy. In this study, data were collected by using questionnaires which not only provides a deeper understanding in the concept of teacher stress but also explores various issues which are related to this.
According to Borg and Gall (1989) this methodology is mostly adopted for getting the response for explanatory and descriptive research. The most common methodology which is used in the research is survey (Cohen & Manion, 1985). Where it can further be collected by using either questionnaires or meeting in person with the respondents for interviews. According to Goldsmith (1996) the method of questionnaires if adopted by the researcher is the preferable method because using a questionnaire makes the researcher realize that what questions the respondent will have to answer to get the appropriate data for the results of research he or she is looking for. For this reason, the researchers carefully design the questionnaires with certain proxies that assist the researchers to explore later once the data is collected from the respondents. Borg and Gall (1989) further explained that the most appropriate methodology adopted by the researchers for data collection are questionnaires. These questionnaires can be administered to the respondents by email, in person or by using the postage mail services. The filled-out questionnaire can effectively portray the require data response on which the researcher can further conduct statistical analysis for understanding the patterns found in data. Once the researcher had found out all the importance of collection of data using questionnaire, in this research the questionnaires were formed to collect the information from the respondents in terms of teachers stress that they encounter on a job or work related stress and the ways, techniques or the strategies they have adopted in response to these stress factors to get rid of routine stress that they observe during work.

Proposed Study Model
The researchers based on literature and hypotheses of the study devised following study model and was empirically tested with the help of different statistical tools and techniques.

Reliability Analysis
The Cronbach alpha is one of the most commonly used reliability measures. If the value of Cronbach α is greater than 0.7 for a variable, it designates that the data gathered for this variable is reliable (Holahan et al., 1995). According to (Hair, 2015) the Cronbach α value greater than 0.60 can also be consider as reliable. The results regarding the reliability for the variables used in this study in table 2 indicate that the reliability for all the studied variables lies in an acceptable range.  (Gounaris, 2005) the standard criteria for accepting internal consistency of already used as well as newly designed scales is that the reliability should be 0.60 and 0.70 or more than 0.70.

Correlation and Descriptive Statistics Analysis
The researchers in this study used standard deviation and mean as descriptive static tools. The results of mean and standard deviation are given in table 3. All the Mean and standard deviation values lie in acceptable standards. The correlation is a statistical measures used to determine the strength of relationship between the two variables (strong, weak or moderate) as well as direction of the relationship (positive or negative) (Mukaka, 2012). The correlation results in table 4 indicates that the correlation between stress among school teachers and social support is strong and negative (r = -0.562, p < 0.01). These results also reflect that the correlation between coping strategies and stress among school teachers is moderate and negative (r = -0.412, p < 0.01). The value of correlation between social

Analyzing Regression Results
The researchers in this study employed multiple linear regression to check and measure the proposed relationships through SPSS version 25. The researchers for analysis purpose used mean values of all the studied variables. The reason for taking mean value in analysis is, the mean values offer combined measurement of a variable and a single standardized value for all the dimensions of a variable (Walpole et al., 2013). The regression results in table 4 indicates the social support and coping strategies effect on stress levels among school teachers in Kotli AJ&K. The social support and coping strategy have been used as predicting variables and the stress levels among teachers have been used as predicted variable in these analyses. The results in table 4 designates the relationships of social support and coping strategies with "stress levels among school teachers" the dependent variable. The regression analysis results and findings specify that social support and the stress level among teachers have a negative and significant relationship (Rsquare = 0.426; F = 24.242; β = -0.464; t-value = 4.842; and p-value = 0.000). The results of the β value contain a negative sign, this implies that stress levels among school teachers and social support has a negative relationship. The results of Rsquare indicate that the variation which occurs in stress levels among teachers due to social support is 42 percent. The other results in table 4 indicate that the p value is less than 0.05 and T value is greater than 2, these results also reflect that there is a negative and significant relationship between social support and stress levels among teachers. These results support first hypothesis of our study.
Further to this, the study also employed regression to find out the relationship of moderator variable i.e. coping strategies with dependent variable stress levels among teachers and fond following results (R2 = 0.092; F = 8.212; β = -0.224; T = -2.722; and p-value = 0.000). The R-square value implies that 9 perecent change in the stress levels among teachers occur because of the moderating variable (coping strategies). The beta value is negative and p value is also significant at 0.000 level, hence in the light of these results the moderating variable i.e. coping strategies and predicted variable i.e. stress levels among teachers negatively and significant relate to each other. Therefore, findings support this relationship.

Moderation Analysis
To test the hypothesis related to moderation, the researchers employed Hayes process moderation using the SPSS version 25 (Hayes, 2017). The researchers analyzed the direct effects of social support on stress levels among teachers by using regression analysis technique and to test the moderating effect of coping strategies the researchers employed Hayes process. Table 5 reflect the results of Hayes process moderation concerning the moderating effect of coping strategies among social support and stress levels among teachers. The hypothesis 2 of the study proposed that the moderator (social support* coping strategies) has negative and significant impact on stress levels among teachers. The findings indicate that β = -0.56 and p-value 0.000. Hence, these results support our hypothesis H2.

Conclusions and Recommendations
The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of social support on levels of stress experienced by secondary school teachers in Kotli AJ&K and to measure the moderating role of coping strategies being adopted by the selected teachers to handle stress. All this has been done using the quantitative approach of questionnaires. It was found by the researchers that almost 95% of all the teachers considered their job to be extremely stressful. Little percentage reported that they had no effect of stress on their jobs. According to (Dussault et al., 1999;Zurlo et al., 2007) the teacher stress is a phenomenon that is very serious in terms that the teachers have influence over the future of students, society at large and most importantly the quality of education that they are proving to their students.
It is a human need to be stress free, this can be achieved if teachers are provided with a healthy environment and a supportive institutional culture, where they can share and discuss the issues for the betterment of the school, quality of education and future of their students. This can only happen when these humanitarian rights of healthy environment are given to teachers. It is also very much important for the institutes to hire healthy and active staff members, who have positive attitude toward the society, and they believe that they are an important part to the development of society and students' future. According to (Balter & Duncombe, 2005) the teachers must play a very vital role in a student's life. He is the one who can make students successful.
The system of education in secondary schools has caused the very stressful conditions for teachers to work in. Parents generally consider that the teachers are responsible for quality education and future of the students. This stereotyping of judging teachers in context that they are the only ones who are responsible for the future of their children must be changed. The society has made up its mind in a manner that they believe it is the sole responsibility of teacher to make students secure good marks in exams. As this is not just the responsibility of teachers, they make students learn then it is up to the student that how much time he gives to his studies which also includes the contribution of society and parents. (Chris Kyriacou & Sutcliffe, 1977) not just the teachers but the principal, colleagues and the students of the school should also be considered for the success of students.
Secondary school teachers mentioned various sources of stress. There are many sources which are observed by teachers across the globe and are observed by teachers as stress like high workload, salary, misbehaving or failing students, resources and poor teaching environment. There are some sources which are limited to Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir. The few which were found unique during the research was the intervention of parents in teachers' classroom, challenging teachers for the things they teach in class this was mostly done by the qualified parents. In other words, there are chances that the things which are observed as stress in other parts of world are also factors of stress in secondary school teachers of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir. There are a few which are limited to a certain part of world.
Most of the teachers said that the workload is causing stress. The secondary school teachers had also revealed that they had more workload then the teachers working in other regular schools of Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir or those who are not secondary school teachers. As they are not the exam question setting authority and they do not even mark the exams of the students, they must finish the curriculum of students as soon as possible to give maximum time to students to memorize and prepare for the secondary school exam. There is a gap between the administration and these teachers, and the lack of decision-making policy is also a hurdle in taking care of these issues properly.
The decision making is centralized, and all the policies and regulations are designed by higher authorities. This makes them disappointed and they have reported that they feel there is no say that they have for the process of decision making regarding various policies of students. Other things also get connected to these sources of stress like low wages and inappropriate standards of promotion this makes the teachers furthermore disappointed in a system where everyone holds them responsible for quality of education and success of their children.
There are many other sources that get linked to these initial sources like low wages and inappropriate promotion standards which further disappoint the teachers that they are neglected and are not properly considered for their improvement. In Kotli Azad Jammu & Kashmir the secondary school teachers are provided high stress training under pressure. This also has been counted as a factor contributing in further stress, when they must get training and work under high stress conditions and there are little, or no reward designed for these hardworking professionals. The policy makers and the government should consider these factors and should devise regulation that not only just bind teachers to the job and responsibility they have but also to motivate them.
The teachers of this secondary school sometimes provide private tutoring just for the sake of additional money in their budget as they have reported that they are not given good salaries. The government must take such regulatory measures that this procedure discontinues and the students who take private tuition should not impact the classroom both the teacher and the students have different types of issues when they get private tuition.
The female secondary school teachers have to face issues for transportation as most of them either do not drive or do not own a car. The issues faced by secondary school female teachers are like those observed as stress in many other countries of the world. The only separation in sources of stress in Kotli is the local cultural issues. The ones those match with the rest of the world are looking after household and especially the children.
To find out appropriate solutions for the stress of secondary school teachers it is very important to study the details of the sources of factors causing stress. There are many steps that the administration can take to improve teacher's motivation and causing less stress to the teachers teaching in these institutes which can be done by increasing the salary, improving office and classroom environment, carefully designing the architecture of the school, lowering the work load of these teachers and providing them with sufficient training to get self-motivated. In addition to this it is also very important for the administration to understand that teacher can improve the work efficiency if they work under a supervision that has supportive role either in terms of the staff members that are working with them or other working in administration.
This understanding if properly gets propagated among the teachers can be a way to reduce stress. If such conducive environment will be providing to the teachers, the teachers will work effectively and there will be an overall sense of respect and satisfaction among the secondary school teachers. Otherwise if there is a dictating non-friendly relationship of supervisor, principal, director or colleagues, the staff will feel disappointed and will get dissatisfied. Cockburn and Haydn (2004) suggested that teachers always want to work in healthy conditions; they want to work independently without any sort of interference by any authority they work hard and that's why they even also demand a challenging environment where they can work effectively. They want to work in a continuous fashion where they do not like sudden changes that are made either in the regulations or the curriculum. Instead of doing any sort of paper work they want to focus on their literary work. With all this there are expectation that the secondary school teachers have about the increase in salary and flexibility in workload. Only then the teachers can be motivated.
There was no significant difference that was found in the stress level of teachers in term of demographic variables that included qualification, teaching stress, marital status, age and sex. However, there was a considerable amount of positive correlation seen among stress and various sources of stress. The strongest of all the correlation was found between stress and work and the teaching difficulties. The weakest of them all was among stress and colleagues at work. There was also an interesting phenomenon that was seen among these teachers which was that they used to make indirect ways or coping strategies for stress instead of using any direct method. As most of the direct ways are not in their own control or they have no experience about them in past and even they are not trained to use any direct method before therefore they have come up with strategies that are indirect in nature. This is done by them because in most of the situation the sources of stress are not under their control. The researcher has also been able to identify a unique happening that in most of the cases the coping strategies depend on the type of the source of stress. Different sources of stress are triggering different type of coping option made by these teachers.
Mostly it is found that the teaching is a high stress profession and most of the teachers working in schools observe that (Cockburn & Haydn, 2004;Kyriacou, 2001;Travers et al., 1996). There are several factors that can be related to stress. This has become a global phenomenon and teachers fell stressed because of the responsibility that society has burdened them with. They feel responsible not just towards students but also towards the society at large. The directors of institutes and the government of Azad Jammu & Kashmir can take examples from across the globe and take the teacher stress issue seriously.
Instead of just experiencing, it is better to prevent it from happening. Then afterwards one can explore the horizons for solutions of stress. These explorations can be expensive. Therefore, the government and legislative bodies have to decide and take strict actions on the previously existing policies and revise them as soon as possible so that the teachers can work in an environment which is completely stress free. Afterwards it would benefit the education system because there will not be any need to replace the stressed-out staff members with fresh one. This study focuses on the level of stress being observed by secondary school teachers. Sources of stress, coping strategies to cope with stress and suggested actions that must take the government and schools to help to reduce stress among teachers. Based on the findings, the researcher noticed that this problem is evident and needed further consideration for future and future research.