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An Exploratory Study on Occupational Stress and Coping Strategies of Special Educators in South India

This empirical study aimed at examining the sources, effects, and the coping strategies of occupational stress among special educators in India. The Government policies are tailored to enhance the education of children with disabilities, but very few of these policies focus the special educators who take care of students with disabilities. These educators have largely been clubbed together with teachers of regular schools. Therefore, the issues of special educators have always been a neglected field in India. Of the 21 million disabled population of the country, 12 million are children with various disabilities, according to Census of India 2001. To meet the educational requirements of these children the country has round about 3200 registered special schools. The number of special educators in each school varies according to the student strength. And the level and nature of stress experienced by this population have hardly been the focus of study. Hence, here an attempt is made to study the nature and levels of occupational stress experienced by teachers of special schools. The geographical area of the study was two districts, Calicut and Malappuram, of the state of Kerala, South India. 35 special educators, who had more than two years of teaching experience, were randomly selected for the study from the schools in this geographical area. The methodology adopted was both quantitative and qualitative. To collect the quantitative data, the occupational Stress Indicator, developed by Cooper, et. al., (1988) was used. The Indicator evaluates occupational stress by analysing five key factors: i) Sources of stress, ii) Individual characteristics, iii) Locus of control, iv) Coping strategies, and v) Effects of stress. To collect qualitative data an unstructured personal interview was used. The quantitative results revealed that the sources of stress spread from: i) school structure and climate, ii) home/work interface, iii) relationship with other people, iv) intrinsic job factors. The common effect of stress on special educators was found to be health related problems - both physical and mental - and job dissatisfaction. There was no organised method to redress the problem rising from occupational stress. As a result, the most commonly used coping strategy were social support, task strategies, and home/school relationship. While the qualitative data confirmed the findings of the quantitative data, it pointed out some other issues, which the quantitative indicators did not cover. The sources of stress as repeatedly reported in the qualitative interviews were that of low salary - due to the subcontracting by the Government to NGO's, job insecurity, work overload, and high teacher-student ratio. The results point to the need of Government policies targeting specifically to the special educators if there has to be tangible improvements in the quality of life of the children with disabilities.