ABSTRACT
This study seeks to better understand the relationship between teachers’ extroversion and the specific aspects of their jobs that stress them out. This study relies heavily on a small number of publications and scholarly papers because more comprehensive data on the Pakistani educational system is not yet available. Surveys from a representative group were the backbone of this study. The purpose of this research is to shed light on the problems that still plague our educational system and put undue pressure on our educators.
The relationships between the few factors addressed in this study are also analysed. The primary objective of this research is to identify those aspects of teachers’ extraversion that contribute to stress. This study also intends to fill in the gaps left by earlier research, especially those which focused on the Pakistani market. The most important aspects contributing to teachers’ stress will be highlighted in this study.
The findings of this research might be used by school administration as a resource for brainstorming methods of inspiring their employees and identifying sources of stress relief. It would also aid in providing a more comprehensive picture of the state of Pakistan’s educational system.
Keywords: Workplace dimensions, job stress, school teachers, high in extroversion (social, outgoing).
INTRODUCTION
Employees are a company’s greatest asset (Muhammad Umair Manzoor, 2011). The purpose of this research is to quantify how various work-related factors affect teachers’ stress levels. In addition, our research shows that teachers’ extroversion is a moderating factor that affects their stress levels throughout Lahore’s educational institutions.
You will feel the effects of the local atmosphere everywhere you go. The ecology of each location is unique. At home, for instance, you have the cultural norms of your family, the independence you enjoy, and so on. The same is true in the workplace setting; there are a variety of characteristics, such as teamwork, politics, and role, that may be seen. Workplace dimensions refer to the various variables and qualities that make up an organization’s environment. Workplace dimensions range from one organisation to the next (Kokkinos, 2007).
The workplace has both positive and bad aspects. Workplace variables such as excessive working hours, not having enough holidays per year, not having enough rest breaks, harsh attitudes of consumers, and lack of acknowledgment from the public were identified in an Australian research (Smith, 2008). The stress levels of workers can be significantly impacted by a number of workplace factors. Workplace factors such as role ambiguity, role conflict, the physical environment, etc., vary widely among industries. (Warn 2003).
Given that every person is unique in terms of his or her personality, it stands to reason that every person’s stress levels would also vary. These days, a person’s employment is a significant part of who they are, and the worth of their life will suffer if they are unhappy at work. Therefore, a person’s productivity may be negatively affected by job-related stress.
The prevalence of stress in modern life is another indicator of its pervasiveness. There are various causes of the stress that practically everyone feels nowadays. The stress associated with various aspects of the workplace is the sole subject of this investigation. Workplace stress can be caused by a variety of factors. The inability to manage one’s own time, schedule one’s own tasks, and minimise one’s own exposure to danger all contribute to stress on the job (Anaesth 2002).
Employees are also under pressure from their interpersonal work responsibilities. Then there’s the added pressure of group projects when your ideas aren’t accepted. Panagiotis Trivellasa (2013) identifies the individual’s participation in decision making as another source of stress.
Educators are vital to the success of any nation. They are the ones responsible for the prosperity of the nation and its people. We thus hypothesise that teachers’ stress levels are affected by a number of different factors, with workplace dimension being one of these elements that we are examining in this study as an independent variable. When instructors are happy with their working conditions, student achievement rises. When teachers are unhappy with their working conditions, stress levels rise.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that teachers experience high levels of stress, and that this stress can result in burnout and job abandonment. (Fisher 2011) .
Being an excellent, highly competent, or highly accountable educator is often connected to stress-inducing factors or dimensions. But these aren’t the only factors that put a strain on educators. Studies show that 32 percent of teachers leave their positions owing to unsatisfactory working circumstances. Thirty-seven percent of teachers who left the field did so because they no longer wanted to be educators. In addition to this, pupils’ bad behaviour is another source of tension in the classroom. Some people reported feeling overwhelmed because of a lack of administrative assistance or confusion over their roles (Fisher, 2011).
The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between job stress and extroversion among Lahore school teachers. We provide the terms used to describe the concepts or variables in this study.
The terms for the various parts of this investigation are as follows:
In order to characterise the settings in which an individual or group of employees carries out their activities, we use the phrase “workplace dimensions,” which encompasses amenities, physical surroundings, stress and noise levels, degree of safety or danger, and similar elements. According to the Business Dictionary.
According to research by psychiatrist Mehdi Behjati Ardakani (2013), “job stress can be defined as a psychological condition that results from an imbalance between job demands and the subject’s ability to cope with those demands.”
The characteristics of extraversion are optimism, friendliness, and activity.” (Kokkinos 2007)
SCOPE OF RESEARCH
This study only focuses on educational institutions in Pakistan, more specifically those in Lahore. The Lahore school teachers with the most experience will be the primary participants in this study. This study identifies the reasons that cause stress among the school teachers keeping their personalities in view. Different schools of Lahore are going to be surveyed and permanent teachers are the main focus as they would have better experience with the particular workplace dimension in which they are working. One dimension of personality (extroversion/introversion) would be tested in this research.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The connection between extroversion/introversion and professional stress has received scant attention. In light of this, the problem statement and key impetus for this study are as follows:
The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between teachers’ extroversion and introversion and the stress they experience at work.”
PURPOSE OF STUDY
The primary motivation for focusing on this area is the paucity of research into the relationship between stress and personality traits. Although much study has been conducted on this subject in other nations, this research aims to better understand what causes stress for Pakistani teachers in Lahore and across the country, and how different aspects of the workplace affect the behaviour of these educators. It will also examine the correlation between extroversion levels and job stress. The purpose of this research is to determine the role that introversion and extroversion play in causing stress at work.
The second reason we’re conducting this study is to learn what stresses out instructors the most, whether they’re introverts or extroverts. That’s why we’re doing this study: to identify what causes stress in Lahore’s classroom instructors.
SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
The findings of this study will add to the body of knowledge on the causes of stress in Pakistan, making it relevant for the education sector in particular. First, it will benefit the already-existing educational institutions. The second group of people who will benefit from this are the educators who want to open their doors shortly.
Immediate advantages of our research are numerous. To begin, it will update existing educational institutions on the causes of stress in the workplace. Existing educational institutions will benefit from this study because they will have a better understanding of the prevalent elements that can be used to address the issues that generate stress for instructors and to lessen those factors in order to encourage their staff.
Second, future schools who hope to open will benefit from this study. The findings of this study will help new educational institutions better understand the sources of stress experienced by educators and the elements that contribute to their development.
As the number of academic studies conducted in Pakistan has increased, we have decided to conduct our quantitative study in the education sector. Our chosen factors, however, require more study because no such studies have been conducted in Pakistan. It would shed light on the factors that contribute to teachers’ stress in the classroom and the part that their personalities play in that stress. The findings of this research will inform school administrators about areas where they can reduce teachers’ stress levels in the workplace.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Operational Definitions
The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between stress and job characteristics among Lahore’s public and private school educators, with an emphasis on the moderating role of extroversion and introversion. We begin by defining the concepts or variables that will be used in this study. Work has increased in significance in modern society, and dissatisfaction with one’s employment may have a negative impact on one’s well-being. Therefore, a person’s productivity may be negatively affected by job-related stress.
According to research by psychiatrist Mehdi Behjati Ardakani (2013), “job stress can be defined as a psychological condition that results from an imbalance between job demands and the subject’s ability to cope with those demands.”
The workplace environment can be a major contributor to stress on the job.
The Business Dictionary 2015 defines “workplace dimensions” as “aspects of a workplace such as its amenities, physical setting, stress and noise levels, and degree of safety or danger.”
The characteristics of extraversion are optimism, friendliness, and activity.” (Kokkinos 2007)
View about the definitions
There are three factors at play in this investigation: the dependent, the independent, and the moderating. In light of these definitions, the dependent variable “job stress” can be thought of as the pressure that workers experience on the job. The workplace’s setting and the many conditions workers face are the independent variables. A person’s degree of stress, sociability, and other personality characteristics are all moderated by their level of extroversion.
Past Researches
Workplace Conditions
Factors such as management’s role, work pressure, and role ambiguity are all mentioned by Manzoor (2009) as contributors to workplace stress. He has also elaborated on the ways in which factors like job happiness, organisational dedication, and so on might affect one’s level of stress at work. Researchers found that private-sector educators were more satisfied and dedicated to their jobs than their public-sector counterparts in terms of remuneration, recognition, effort, salary, and advancement. The ‘work stability’ factor was more important to public school teachers, who were happier overall. Despite these relatively few criteria addressing contentment, a recent study of professional stress indicated that educators are among the most likely to feel overwhelmed by their workload. One of the leading causes of stress on the job is this. Pressure to do well on an annual review and the temptation to measure one’s success against that of one’s peers are two additional sources of stress for educators. Overload, job authority, role conflict, and a lack of senior level support are just a few of the stressors that are examined in this research, which looks at the causes of stress in both the commercial and public sectors. (Muhammad Umair Manzoor 2009).
Interpersonal demands, lack of professional recognition, classroom discipline issues, a wide variety of tasks, a lack of support from administration, a heavy workload, tight deadlines, a mountain of paperwork, a dearth of resources, and so on are just some of the stressors identified by Kokkinos (2007) in his study of teachers’ work lives. Lack of social recognition, huge class sizes, lack of classroom management, job ambiguity, restricted professional prospects, etc. were all mentioned as contributing issues in this study. Extroversion and agreeableness predicted depersonalization (a negative, or detached attitude towards the people with whom one works), and agreeableness and extroversion predicted personal accomplishment (perseverance in the face of adversity), while neuroticism predicted emotional exhaustion (feelings of being emotionally overextended and a strong reduction of one’s emotional resources). The author uses these three measures to characterise burnout. When stress at work becomes overwhelming, it can lead to burnout. The author also suggests that extraversion and neuroticism (anxiety) are linked to one’s psychological well-being right now. While extraversion protected people from having bad things happen to them, neuroticism put them at risk for the reverse. Similarly, the author argues that people who are low in extraversion tend to be shy or reserved, whereas those who are strong in extraversion tend to be upbeat, optimistic, and physically active—possibly because they participate in more activities to combat the negative effects of stress. Positive affectivity (one aspect of extraversion) is associated with lower rates of burnout in the workplace, and the reverse is also likely to be true. (Kokkinos 2007).
Managing student misbehaviour and time restrictions were the two most significant causes of stress that predicted subsequent characteristics of burnout, whereas role ambiguity and student evaluation of instructors had smaller but still significant contributions. According to the author, high levels of neuroticism in educators are associated with increased stress due to emotional weariness and depersonalization in the workplace. Of course, there are plenty of other stressful aspects of the workplace that contribute to the tense atmosphere (Kokkinos, 2007).
Physical, environmental, psychological, and general elements are what Yusoff (2013) highlights in his research on the causes of stress on the workplace. It also notes that instructors face tremendous stress from role conflict, workload, and student concerns. The results of this study show that working in the private sector is far more stressful for educators than working in the public sector. Workload stress, role uncertainty, management responsibilities, performance expectations, and interpersonal connections are all addressed. Therefore, role stress (role ambiguity, role conflicts) is positively associated with job stress in university professors, and adversely associated with organisational commitment. The author lists low pay, a lack of physical resources, academic problems, ambiguity of job outcomes (like organisational commitment and job performance), role ambiguity (like not knowing exactly what you’ll be doing every day), role conflicts with students, and the stress of having too much work to do. (Rosman Md. Yusoff 2013).
According to Kaur’s (2011) research, workers experience occupational stress when there is a mismatch between their skills and the requirements of their jobs. Overwork, he said, is a key contributor to stress in the workplace. One possible cause of work overload is an increase in the amount of work that has to be done but not enough new employees to handle it. The body’s defences might be weakened, energy stores depleted, etc., all because of stress. If not handled correctly, occupational stress can have negative effects on a person’s physical and mental health. Beyond just imparting the knowledge contained in a textbook to a student, the profession of teaching has evolved into one that places significant demands on its practitioners in recent years (Kaur, 2011).
Teachers in the modern day are seen not just as lecturers but also as administrators of information. They are constantly threatened with accountability for all of his acts, as well as those of his pupils, and they operate in a complicated workplace with a wide range of perspectives. Anxiety, tension, conflicts with superiors or peers, job overload, sudden shifts in priorities, a lack of self-assurance, worries about public performance, and marital and family issues are all listed as major sources of stress in this research. (Kaur 2011).
Stress
The role of teachers in society has changed dramatically during the last decade. Teachers are showing symptoms of heightened stress as a consequence of the new classroom responsibilities. According to Franklin Stein (2002), “stress is an unavoidable part of life that everyone has to deal with” (Stress is a “total response to one’s environmental demands and pressures”).
“Teacher stress” is described as “a teacher’s experience of unpleasant emotions, such as tension, frustration, anxiety, anger, and depression, as a result of aspects of his work as a teacher” (Kyriacou 1978).
According to Jain (2014), everyone experiences stress, but everyone responds to stress in their own unique manner. The influence of personality type, gender, age, education level, and years of experience in work-related stress among teacher educators was investigated. According to the findings, female educators are more likely than male educators to experience stress, and both younger and older educators report feeling anxious. Stress is also more prevalent among less trained and experienced educators than among their more qualified and experienced peers. Introverted educators are more stressed than their extroverted colleagues. Geetika Jain (2015).
Stress, according to Sathasivam, may stem from a variety of sources, including the acts of people, groups, and whole organisations. The origins of these characteristics have been traced back to both internal and external sources, including the groups with whom workers interact and the employees themselves. An person may experience stress if they believe they must execute their job aggressively owing to organisational elements such as their work schedule, work environment, or work orientation (V. Sathasivam, 2015).
When it comes to stress, researchers have shown that teachers have it worse than those in other jobs (Saul Neves de Jesus, 2001).
According to Singh (2004), greater stressful work results in more negative effects, such as people leaving their jobs and decreasing productivity. Teachers’ mental health has long been a source of worry. However, during the previous two decades, teaching has become more demanding for both students and teachers (Singh, 2004).
Working circumstances, workload, position ambiguity, job features, responsibility, interactions with superiors, and connections with variables (such as with subordinates, colleagues, and job security) may all contribute to workplace stress.
According to Fontana’s (2012) study of teachers’ stress levels, gender, and personality factors, 76.2% had experienced some stress and 23.2% had experienced substantial stress. The study’s emphasis on personality over demographic variables such as age and gender provided additional support for the hypothesis that stress and neuroticism are significantly correlated (Fontana 2013).
Furthermore, research was undertaken on the diagnosis of psychosomatic disorders and the causes of stress among Hong Kong teachers (Jin 2008). It sought to discover the link between psychosomatic symbols and causes of stress in teachers. The findings of this study revealed a substantial association between critical aspects in instructors’ working stress, such as student concerns, the involvement of others, non-school authorities’ tasks schedule, a large amount of work, and a lack of vital information. However, all of the instances analysed exhibited a connection with psychosomatic symbols (Jin 2008).
Occhionero (2010) conducted a study on work stress and burnout in teachers, and his findings revealed that there is a substantial association between job stress and burnout in both female and male teachers (Ferrari Occhionero 2010).
Extroversion
According to Abbas Sadeghi (2016), a person’s personality is more complex than a basic model, consisting of a wide range of ingrained psychological traits that are virtually impossible to change.
The big five theory of personality is a widely used framework in modern psychological research. Extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and neuroticism are the five pillars of the big five personality paradigm (Nayyar Raza Zaidi, 2013).
Positivity and a desire for other people’s company are hallmarks of extroversion. It stands for the disposition to interact with others and make conversation easily. People who are more extroverted tend to have good emotions and reactions to social situations, such as enthusiasm and a desire to be involved. (Costa 1992).
Persons high in agreeableness are more likely to be trustworthy, cooperative, compassionate, considerate, giving, and mild-mannered. Conscious people have goals in life and stick to them. They have a disposition towards duty, self-discipline, and goal-directed behaviour in relation to objective standards and criteria. People who demonstrate symptoms of neuroticism include those who are easily frightened, anxious, tense, angry, or guilty. Both healthy emotional regulation and dysfunctional regulation are associated with neuroticism (Costa 1992).
Creative, emotionally responsive, intellectually curious, engaged in the arts, and sensitive to beauty are all traits of persons who are wide open. They display uncommon criteria of merit as well as a receptivity to opposing viewpoints (Costa 1992).
In a research of university professors working in the public sector in Lahore, it was discovered that extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience were all positively correlated with job engagement (Nayyar Raza Zaidi, 2013).
According to Machin’s (2013) research, both teachers’ and students’ satisfaction was influenced by a variety of factors related to the school and teaching environment. It made notice of the important connections between neuroticism and employment demands on the one hand, and extroversion and the educational setting on the other (Machin 2013).
The association between personality characteristics and occupational stress was the focus of Kumari’s (2006) study of female high school teachers in Haryana. The high burnout group of female teachers had greater levels of psychoticism, neuroticism, the lying scale, and type A behaviour, while extroversion was lower. It was unexpected to see that teachers with high burnout levels had low levels of occupational stress. The study has limitations since demographics and other potential contextual variables weren’t taken into consideration (Kumari, 2006).
Because they are more inclined to build connections with others and put themselves out there, managers who have extroverted personalities were shown to have lower levels of work stress (V. Sathasivam, 2015).
