A personal construct approach to avoiding teacher “burnout” and“rustout”

Abstract

Personal construct psychology enabled teacher stress to be conceptualised in terms of their perceptions of their ability to cope with stressors. Different degrees of support were seen in terms of the teachers' allocation of dependencies. Pre- and post-intervention questionnaires and FOCUS-ed (or cluster analysed) Dependency (individual and mode) grids were used to reveal and manipulate 11 teachers' resources and then to monitor how their group levels of stress were affected. Although the study reflected an idiographic approach rather than a substantive pattern, stress was reduced for the highly stressed, maintained for the moderately stressed and increased for the low stressed. Since using a not coping rather than a coping perspective characterised the distressed group before the intervention, teachers may need to emphasise a more affirmative stance. Once teachers establish what they construe as stressful and what support they can use, they are in a more informed position to engage in stress management or maintenance.