New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
New York University, New York, NY, USA.
Am J Community Psychol. 2019 Jun;63(3-4):286-297. doi: 10.1002/ajcp.12308. Epub 2019 Jan 17.
Teachers' stress is a dynamic combination of the individual teacher's characteristics and characteristics of the classroom and school environment. To date, there are limited studies on teachers' stress in the context of lower-middle-income countries (LMICs), where working conditions as well as general political and economic circumstances might pose a considerable threat for teachers' well-being. This study explores whether certain combinations of individual and environmental experiences of teachers in LMICs may result in stress, assessed as patterns of diurnal cortisol rhythm. Participants were kindergarten teachers in Kosovo and Ukraine, two LMICs in Europe. Latent Profile Analysis identified three subgroups of teachers that significantly differed on teachers' education and experience. Preliminary results of Latent Growth Modeling suggested differences between profiles in baseline waking cortisol and patterns of diurnal decline. Teachers in the profile that was characterized by the longest experience working in the field but the lowest level of education showed blunted cortisol in the morning and a flatter slope; a pattern that could indicate a maladaptive cortisol response. Future directions for studying stress processes among teachers in LMICs and implications for policy and practice on how to support teacher well-being in low-resource contexts are discussed.
教师压力是教师个体特征与课堂和学校环境特征的动态组合。迄今为止，针对中低收入国家（LMICs）教师压力的研究有限，在这些国家，工作条件以及一般政治和经济环境可能对教师的福祉构成相当大的威胁。本研究探讨了 LMICs 中教师的个体和环境体验的某些组合是否可能导致压力，这种压力通过日间皮质醇节律模式来评估。参与者是科索沃和乌克兰的幼儿园教师，这两个国家都是欧洲的 LMICs。潜在剖面分析确定了教师的三个亚组，这些亚组在教师教育和经验方面存在显著差异。潜在增长模型的初步结果表明，在基线清醒皮质醇和日间下降模式方面，各剖面之间存在差异。在以在该领域工作经验最长但教育水平最低为特征的特征剖面中，皮质醇在早晨减弱，斜率变平；这种模式可能表明皮质醇反应失调。讨论了在 LMICs 中研究教师压力过程的未来方向，以及在资源匮乏环境中支持教师福祉的政策和实践的意义。
