THE EFFECT OF PROFESSIONAL GROWTH/CONTINUING EDUCATION ACTIVITIES AS A STRESS PREVENTIVE STRATEGY FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to determine whether professional growth/continuing education activities actually do prevent and/or alleviate stress among public school teachers in Tennessee, as has been popularly espoused. Although current literature in the field suggests that the provision of professional growth/continuing education programs, including workshops, lecture series, seminars, in-services, and formal and informal college and/or graduate course work not part of a degree program, should so function as a stress-reducing technique, no statistical data has been compiled demonstrating that this strategy is in fact effective as as stress management tool. This paper was an attempt to move beyond the popular assumption that certain coping strategies "work" simply because they have been accepted unquestioned, to begin research on a particular strategy widely in use as a means of improving competency in teachers to see if it at the same time effectively functions in such a way as to aid in controlling stress in teachers. The acceptance of all five null hypotheses means that the data from this study does not support the contention that professional growth/continuing education activities are effective strategies for preventing or alleviating stress among public school teachers. Accepting the null hypotheses in this case does not unequivocally refute the literature in the field, but does indicate that in this particular instance, with this test and these subjects and at this point in time, those asserted principles dealt with in the study remain unsupported and that further research is needed before conclusive acceptance or rejection is decided. In the course of the study it emerged, however, that the number of different kinds of illnesses incurred over an extended period of time, along with the number of sick leave days during a given school year, may be an effective rule-of-thumb for determining which teachers may be in need of intervention to prevent them from burning out.
Subject Area
Teacher education
Recommended Citation
ROBERT A GIEZENTANNER,
"THE EFFECT OF PROFESSIONAL GROWTH/CONTINUING EDUCATION ACTIVITIES AS A STRESS PREVENTIVE STRATEGY FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS"
(1987).
ETD Collection for Tennessee State University.
Paper AAI8802642.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI8802642