| The literature on teacher stress and burnout suggests that teachers' experiences of being hindered play a major role in teacher workplace stress. Relying on the existential-phenomenological research approach, I investigated teachers' experiences of being hindered by interviewing eight middle school teachers in Utah's Jordan School District. Results show that, for the most part, a teacher's experience of being hindered involves feeling as though one is being blocked from accomplishing some important educational goal or objective related to one's primary responsibility to educate students. Furthermore, this experience is characterized by feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, frustration, anger, guilt and regret, and feeling unsupported, and disrespected. These feelings often co-occur and contribute to one another. I discuss some of the implications of these results, such as that educators should address teachers' unmet expectations of administrators. Teachers' unmet expectations often lead to anger, frustration, and feelings of being unsupported, which can contribute to teacher stress and burnout. |
