Stress among Special Education Teachers in Malaysia

This study investigates factors that contribute stress and level of occupational stress among special education teachers who are currently teaching in special education classes in the state of Penang, Malaysia. Result shows that there are five major factors that contribute to stress among special education teachers in Penang. A total of 92 special education teachers were chosen randomly to represent the population by using the cluster over cluster method. The instrument for this study was adapted from the Teacher Stress Inventory constructed by Boyle, Borg, Falzon and Baglioni (1995) and had been modified by Mokhtar (1998) and Mazlan (2002). A pilot study has been conducted and the Alpha Croncbach for the instrument was 0.982. The data have been analyzed using both descriptive (mean, frequency, and percentage) and inherency methods (Independent t-Test, Pearson Correlation, and One Way ANOVA). Result indicates that the overall stress level of respondent is at moderate. Among the five stressors, pupil misbehavior is the strongest determinant of teacher stress with a mean of 3.70. Other factors are teacher workload (mean = 3.22), time and resources difficulties (mean = 3.11), recognition (mean = 3.05), and interpersonal relationships (mean = 3.00) respectively. The workload and other factors had caused a moderate stress on the respondents. The result also indicates that there is no significant difference of work stress among the respondent based on gender, marriage status, and highest academic qualification. Furthermore, the result of this study failed to indicate a significant correlation between teacher stress and demographic factors such as age, length of teaching experience, and the respondents’ monthly salary.