The course deals with professional demands and the occurrence of stress in teaching. Teaching as a helping profession shows a high level of burden and stress, which can lead to burnout syndrome with long-term exposure. The aim of the course is to introduce the stressors present in teaching, with professional demands and dilemmas and with the possibilities of successful management and solutions, at the level of individuals, schools and departments. The course will offer students both theoretical and empirical knowledge about teacher stress and burnout, as well as opportunities to learn about their own weaknesses in managing professional demands and to practice effective strategies. The course will consist of 5-6 meetings, which will include the three blocks presented. For each meeting, students will be given a professional reading and a practical task through the Moodle platform. The meeting will systematize theoretical and empirical knowledge on the topic and especially present and discuss practical tasks.
The course includes three basic blocks:
1. Stress and sources of stress in teaching - The first block will characterize stress and describe its manifestations. Stress is grasped in the course through Hobfoll's theory of resource conservation and is defined by disturbing the balance of the organism. This concept will be compared with other approaches. In the first block, attention will also be paid to the classification of the causes of teacher and work stress in general, which result from Czech and foreign research. In addition to generalizing classifications, the individual nature of stressors will be shown. Students will map their own professional workload using self-diagnostic techniques. The outcome of the first block will be a presentation of the burnout syndrome .
2. Stress management - In the second block, stress management strategies or coping strategies will be introduced, by which the individual responds to the present stress and strives to restore the balance of the organism. Students will learn various typologies of coping strategies and empirical research aimed at coping strategies. Coping strategies will be distinguished with regard to whether they lead to long-term successful management of stress, ie reducing its overall rate. With the help of existing questionnaires and other self-reflective methods, students will be led to map personally preferred coping strategies.
3. Prevention of burnout syndrome - In the third block, a comprehensive system of prevention of burnout will be presented, which includes activities at the level of individuals, at the level of faculty and schools and at the level of the school system. Attention will also be paid to possible interventions in cases where burnout syndrome has already occurred.
Literature
Last update: PhDr. Monika Kadrnožková, Ph.D. (26.10.2020)
LAZARUS, R. S. Coping theory and research: past, present, and future. Psychosomatic Medicine. 1993, 55, 234–247.
Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1984). Burnout in organizational settings. Applied social psychology annual.
Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., Leiter, M. P., Schaufeli, W. B., & Schwab, R. L. (1986). Maslach burnout inventory (Vol. 21, pp. 3463-3464). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting psychologists press.
MAREK, T., SCHAUFELI, W. B., & MASLACH, C. Professional burnout: Recent developments in theory and research. Routledge, 2017.
