Hardiness Among Secondary School Teachers In Relation To Gender
Teachers are of paramount importance in the educational systems of all nations, and the overall progress of a nation largely depends upon the quality of its teachers. From primary to higher education, a teacher is looked upon as an ideal for students. Healthy and motivated teachers have a positive impact on society as a whole because their way of coping with stressful situations undoubtedly also has an impact on student’s attitude and overall school performance.
Teachers, being an important part of the society, also feel stress in their day to day activities. This in turn influences their teaching and influences student’s life. There are some teachers who remain healthy and happy, even in the stressful situations. All this is due to their way of coping with stress.
Teacher is of paramount importance in the educational system of all the nations and the overall progress of the nation depends mainly upon the quality of its teachers. From primary to higher education, a teacher is looked upon as an ideal for students. Healthy and motivating teachers have positive implications for society as whole because their way of coping with the situations undoubtedly also have an impact on student’s attainment and overall school performance. Teachers being an important part of the society, too feel stress in their day to day life activities. This inturn influence their teaching and inturn influence student’s life. There are some teachers who remain healthy and happy even in the stressful situations. All this is due to their way of coping with stress. The present study was conducted on 100 secondary school teachers to find out gender difference in personality hardiness and its dimensions among male and female secondary school teachers of Fazilka District.
*Assistant Professor, Guru Gobind Singh College of Education, Giddarbaha.
**M.Ed. Student, Guru Gobind Singh College of Education, Giddarbaha.
Spielberger (1979), believed that work stress is one of the most important factors affecting productivity because of the direct relationship between the individual's behaviour and the stress he or she experiences. Hardiness is a pattern of attitudes and skills that provides the courage and strategies to turn stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities. Hardiness is even relevant in the stressful settings such as teaching. Healthy and motivating teachers have positive implications for society as whole because their way of coping with the situations undoubtedly also have an impact on student’s attainment and overall school performance. Conceptually, hardiness is defined as a constellation of personality characteristics that function as a resistance resource in the encounter with stressful life events (Kobasa, Maddi and Hoover, 1982). It was usually defined as a personality structure comprising the three related general dispositions of commitment, control, and challenge that functions as a resistance to encounter the stressful conditions. The commitment disposition was defined as a tendency to involve oneself in the activities in life and having a genuine interest in and curiosity about the surrounding world (activities, things, other people). The control disposition was defined as a tendency to believe and act as if one can influence the events taking place around oneself through one’s own effort. Finally, the challenge disposition was defined as the belief that changes, rather than stability, is the normal mode of life and constitutes motivating opportunities for personal growth rather than threats to security. Hardiness as a combination of three attitudes (commitment, control, and challenge) that together provide the courage and motivation needed to turn stressful circumstances from potential calamities into opportunities for personal growth. Role of teacher is crucial in the education setting. So, they must have hardy in nature to manage stress and make teaching successful. This inturn influence their personality aspect which change to look out the stressful situations into a challenging one.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE:
Rhodewalt and Zone (1989) studied hardy women are more satisfied than less hardy women. Hardy persons are more satisfied and not suffering from stress and burnout. Boyle, Grap, Younger and Thornby (1991) found the relation between hardiness, ways of coping; social support and burnout in 103 critical care nurses. Work-related and non-work-related social support and hardiness were negatively related to burnout. Use of emotion-focused coping was positively correlated with burnout while hardiness was negatively related to the use of emotion-focused coping and positively related to both types of social support. After controlling for working nights, social support, hardiness, emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping accounted for 44% of the variance in burnout scores. Subramanian and Vinothkumar (2009) conducted study to examine relation among hardiness personality, self-esteem and occupational stress index among IT professionals. Data were collected from 140 IT professionals employed in four computer software organizations. The results of correlation showed that hardiness and self-esteem tend to have negative and significant correlations with role overload, role ambiguity, low status and strenuous working conditions. Chadha and Sidhu (2014) revealed the relationship of personality hardiness and coping styles among college teachers of Ludhiana District. For this study 100 college teachers were taken. Personality Hardiness (Nowack, 1990) Coping Styles (Folkman and Lazarus, 1988 cited by Tobbin, 2001) were used to collect the data. Significant relationship between personality hardiness and coping style was found among college teachers of Ludhiana District.
Personality hardiness was also found to have significant relationship with various dimensions of coping styles (Problem focused Engagement, Emotion Focused engagement, Problem focused Disengagement, Emotion Focused Disengagement) among college teachers. Kilinc (2014) studied Psychological Hardiness in 369 teacher working in 12 primary schools in Ankara to demographic variable such as gender, branch, age, seniority, years in current school variables. Finding of the study was not significantly related to gender, branch, age, seniority, years in current school variables.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:
“Hardiness Among Secondary School Teachers In Relation To Gender”
The objective of the study was:
- To study gender difference in personality hardiness and its dimensions among male and female secondary school teachers of Fazilka District.
To fulfill the objective of the study, the following hypothesis was formulated:
- There was no significant gender difference in personality hardiness and its dimensions among secondary school teachers of Fazilka District.
The proposed study was delimited in the following manner:
- The sample of the study was drawn from secondary school of Fazilka District only.
- The study was delimited to the 100 teachers of Fazilka District only.
The descriptive survey method was used for the conduct of the present study.
The study was conducted on 100 secondary school teachers (50 male teachers and 50 female teachers) selected from private and government secondary school teachers of Fazilka District. Stratified random sampling was done for the study.
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The following tool was used to collect data for the present investigation:
- Personality Hardiness Scale (PHS) by Kobasa and Maddi (1982).
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION OF THE STUDY:
The variable personality hardiness includes three dimensions namely: commitment, control and challenge. t-values were computed to study gender differences in secondary school teachers dimension wise as well as total personality hardiness and presented in the table I.
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From the table I, it is evident that on the dimension of personality hardiness commitment and control, no t-test value came out to be significant at both the levels. But, the t-value of dimension challenge of personality hardiness came out to be significant at .01 level. Also, the total personality hardiness came out to be significant at .01 level. This means, there is no significant difference in personality hardiness on the dimension commitment and control for male and female secondary school teachers. But there are significant mean difference found on the dimension challenge of male and female secondary school teachers. This showed that female secondary school teachers are high hardy as compared to male secondary school teacher.
So, the hypothesis, “There will be no significant gender difference in personality hardiness and its dimensions among secondary school teachers of Fazilka District” stands partially accepted.
Present study revealed that there is an urgent need in the education system must promote life skills, enabling teachers to attain high standards and develop appropriate personal qualities which that will help teachers to behave normally under stressful conditions. Teachers must make up their routine life systematically. Teachers have to attend seminars, workshops and refresher course to build up their personality in the fast growing world as teaching and teachers are on the prestigious position.
Boyle, A., Grap, M. J., Younger, J., & Thornby, D. (1991). Personality hardiness, ways of coping, social support, and burnout in critical care nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 16, 850- 857
Chadha, M., & Sidhu, R. K. (2014). A study of relationship of personality hardiness and coping styles among college teachers. GHG Journal of sixth thought, 1(1), 29-12. Killinc, A. C. (2014). Examining Psychological Hardiness of primary school teachers of demographic variables. Turkish Journal of Education, 3(1), 70-79.
Kobasa, S. C. (1982). The Hardiness Test (3rd ed.) New York, Hardiness Institute.
Kobasa, S. C., & Maddi, S. R. (1977). Extential Personality theory. In R. Corsins (Ed.) Currrent Personality Theory Hosca,, IL: Peacock.
Kobasa, S. C., & Maddi, S. R. (1982). Hardiness Measurement New York: Graduate School and University Center.
Kobasa, S. C., Maddi, S. R., & Hoover, M. (1982). Hardiness and health: A prospective study. Journal of Personality and social psychology, 42, 168-177.
Rhodewalt, F., & Zone, J. B. (1989). Appraisal of life change, depression and illness in hardy and non-hardy women. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 81-86.
Spielberger, C. D. (1979). Understanding stress and anxiety. New York: Harper & Row.
Subramanian, S., & Vinothkumar, M. (2009). Hardiness personality, self- esteem and occupational stress among IT professionals. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 35, 48-56