A Study On The Occupational Stress And Work Engagement Of Special Education Teacher

Education is the root of a country, and the teachers are the foundation of education. As talents breeders, the feelings and attitudes of the teachers largely affect the development of education, and impact social development and progress indirectly. As an occupation, teachers are under higher pressure level than other occupations. It has been shown that teachers are suffering from great pressure, and it seriously affects their life, work, physical and mental health. Teachers occupational stress has become one of the topics which in-depth study of educational disciplines, as well as other social disciplines are concerned. Special education teachers’work content, the intensity of work and role multiplicity are much more than ordinary teachers because of its special job objects, and few feedback and reduced accomplishment in long-term complex and diverse work lead them to the varying degrees of mental health problems which was significantly higher than ordinary teachers. This is bound to affect the attitude and engagement of special education teachers on their own work. Work engagement as the concept of occupational psychology is different from the previous studies of work status which use the concept of burnout, but mainly reflect the individual recognition and attitude of the importance of work in positive sides, and that improve the degrees of work engagement can improve individual occupational mental health level. Confronting pressure, the engagement of special education teachers is undoubtedly associated with the enthusiasm and contribution to work thus affecting the effect of the rehabilitation of children with special needs. A lot of domestic researches mainly concentrated on ordinary teachers recent years, but very rare on special education teachers, much less occupational stress and work engagement of special education teacher. We selected these two factors which closely relate to teacher to explore their status as well as the differences of the different variables and their relationships to make some recommendations according to research results.A sample of765special education principals and teachers in Zhejiang Province was tested with Occupational Stress Questionnaire of Special Education Teacher, which an instrument created for this study, and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). The major findings were as follows:1、Special education teachers of Zhejiang are experiencing medium high occupational stress, and workload is the major sources of stress. 2、The female teachers’ occupation stress is higher than men, and men has higher role stress. Occupational stress levels of special education teachers decrease with age. Teachers who have work for six to ten years have higher stress. Well-educated, low income, primary title and unmarried or childless teachers suffer from higher stress than others, while middle title teachers are more restricted by role.3、It is high level of work engagement of Zhejiang special education teachers, and dedication level is the highest.4、Men are more vigorous than female. Work engagement levels of special education teachers increase with age. Juniors are higher level than senior, while well-educated teachers are lower level than ill-educated ones. Well income and unmarried teachers tent to throw themselves into work.5、Occupational stress and work engagement has significant negative correlation, and three aspects of occupational stress are negative in predicting the special education teachers work engagement.