Stress and Empathy in Teachers at General and Special Education Schools

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to examine the differences in the intensity of the sources of teacher stress and in the degree of empathy among teachers in elementary education with regard to the educational setting in which they work. Data were collected from 101 elementary school teachers using the Teacher Stress Inventory and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Differences in the intensity of overall stress were not statistically significant. With both groups of teachers the greatest intensity of stress is connected with problematic classes and insufficient salary. Statistically significant differences were not detected between GES and SES either on the subscales or the aggregate scores of the IRI.GES teachers demonstrated a statistically significant relation between the scores on the scale of stress sources and those on the scale of overall empathy. There is a significant correlation between scores on the scale of Sources of stress and the subscale of Personal distress in both groups. By summing up the results, we identified various types of connectivity between particular stressors and the level of empathy of GES and SES teachers, both in the relationship to the overall score on the IRI and to the results on the subscales.