{"title":"Teachers on the margins: How low-income public schools burden our teachers.","authors":"Mozhgon Rajaee, Samantha N. Karson, A. McCullough","doi":"10.3233/wor-210010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"BACKGROUND\nTeachers experience high work-related stress, which can lead to missed workdays and lower quality of life.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nThe objective of this exploratory pilot study was to assess occupational and environmental stressors in public school districts by income level to examine the influence these stressors have on teachers perceived stress and biological stress response.\n\n\nMETHODS\nFifty-nine teachers were recruited from four school districts in Michigan (three low-income and one high-income). Participants completed a self-administered survey on teaching stressors, health, and demographics. Stress response was measured through blood pressure, heart rate, and salivary cortisol. Six salivary cortisol measurements were collected for each participant; three in the afternoon and three in the evening. Each teacher's classroom and school underwent an environmental assessment on quality and proximity to environmental hazards.\n\n\nRESULTS\nTeachers at low-income school districts had significantly higher afternoon cortisol levels, lower self-reported health, higher body mass index, higher perceived teaching stressors, and worked at schools within one km of a greater number of environmentally-contaminated sites, in comparison to their high-income school district counterparts.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThis research aims to inform future interventions that could lessen occupational and environmental stressors for teachers, improve teacher health outcomes and retention, and impact student success rates.","PeriodicalId":49090,"journal":{"name":"Cognition Technology & Work","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cognition Technology & Work","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3233/wor-210010","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, INDUSTRIAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Teachers experience high work-related stress, which can lead to missed workdays and lower quality of life.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this exploratory pilot study was to assess occupational and environmental stressors in public school districts by income level to examine the influence these stressors have on teachers perceived stress and biological stress response.
METHODS
Fifty-nine teachers were recruited from four school districts in Michigan (three low-income and one high-income). Participants completed a self-administered survey on teaching stressors, health, and demographics. Stress response was measured through blood pressure, heart rate, and salivary cortisol. Six salivary cortisol measurements were collected for each participant; three in the afternoon and three in the evening. Each teacher's classroom and school underwent an environmental assessment on quality and proximity to environmental hazards.
RESULTS
Teachers at low-income school districts had significantly higher afternoon cortisol levels, lower self-reported health, higher body mass index, higher perceived teaching stressors, and worked at schools within one km of a greater number of environmentally-contaminated sites, in comparison to their high-income school district counterparts.
CONCLUSIONS
This research aims to inform future interventions that could lessen occupational and environmental stressors for teachers, improve teacher health outcomes and retention, and impact student success rates.
期刊介绍:
Cognition, Technology & Work focuses on the practical issues of human interaction with technology within the context of work and, in particular, how human cognition affects, and is affected by, work and working conditions.
The aim is to publish research that normally resides on the borderline between people, technology, and organisations. Including how people use information technology, how experience and expertise develop through work, and how incidents and accidents are due to the interaction between individual, technical and organisational factors.
The target is thus the study of people at work from a cognitive systems engineering and socio-technical systems perspective.
The most relevant working contexts of interest to CTW are those where the impact of modern technologies on people at work is particularly important for the users involved as well as for the effects on the environment and plants. Modern society has come to depend on the safe and efficient functioning of a multitude of technological systems as diverse as industrial production, transportation, communication, supply of energy, information and materials, health and finance.