An Examination of Teacher Perceptions of Classroom Demands and Resources Using the Schools and Staffing Survey

• In Event: Exploring Dimensions of Teacher Stress Using Diverse Methodologies

Abstract

Transactional theory (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) suggests teacher stress results from a perceived imbalance of classroom demands and resources. Teacher perceptions that classroom demands exceed their perceived classroom resources are hypothesized to lead to stress. The Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands (CARD) was developed to identify teachers viewing demands as exceeding resources (Lambert, McCarthy, O’Donnell, & Wang, 2009), and has been supported by research showing teachers with high levels of demands with respect to classroom resources are likely to report more job dissatisfaction and less occupational commitment (Lambert, McCarthy, Fitchett, Lineback, & Reiser, 2015).
This study examined whether transactional stress research with local samples of elementary teachers using the CARD can be replicated nationally. The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) contains many items similar to the CARD Demands and Resources scales. SASS is the largest and most comprehensive data source available on teachers and schools (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). Items from the SASS survey addressing similar classroom demands and resources to those measured in the CARD were identified. This information was used to classify teachers following the three-group classification system used in previous CARD research (Demands, Balanced, and Resourced). The participants were elementary teacher respondents to the 2008 SASS. Respondents were contacted through a complex multi-stage sampling procedure in which buildings were sampled and then samples of teachers were selected from within each sampled school. SASS was designed to create a nationally representative sample of teachers and to collect data regarding their perceptions of school climate, overall employment and working conditions, and descriptive data about school contexts throughout the nation.
Given the sampling procedures and the varying non-response rates across subgroups of teachers, specialized statistical procedures were necessary in order to both weight the results to be nationally representative and to calculate the appropriate standard errors and significance tests. Robust percentages, means, standard errors and significant tests were obtained from the AM software by using the final teacher sampling and replicate weights with the Balanced Repeated Replication estimation method.
Teachers were classified into groups based on their Appraisal index score according to the CARD scoring protocol, resulting in three groups: Resourced n=2,900 (24.2%), Balanced n=5,930 (49.5%), and Demands n=3,150 (26.3%). We hypothesized that teachers in the Demands group would rate their occupational conditions more negatively than their colleagues in the other groups. There were statistically significant differences in the expected directions between the Demands and the two other Appraisal groups on all outcomes. Teachers in the Demands group were less likely to report they would become a teacher again (76.6%) than those in the Resourced group (94.5%), and much less likely to report they would return to teaching (67.2%) than Resourced teachers (85.2%). Demands group teachers reported statistically significantly lower Classroom Control scores, a measure of teacher autonomy, as compared to Resourced teachers (d = -.762). These findings replicate previous CARD research, specifically teachers in the Demands group had lower levels of job satisfaction and were more likely to leave the profession (McCarthy, Lambert, Lineback, Fitchett, & Baddouh, 2015).

Authors

• Richard G. Lambert, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Paul G. Fitchett, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Sally Lineback, The University of Texas - Austin

• Christopher J. Mccarthy, The University of Texas - Austin

• Lauren Helena Boyle, The University of Texas - Austin