Stress Management and Teachers’ Productivity in Cameroon: Lessons from Momo Division

Abstract

A teacher who is stressed out, stresses out his student who in turn, behave differently (usually worse) and consequently produce more stress for the teacher. This study on Stress management and teachers’ productivity was carried out in Momo Division North West Region of Cameroon. The aim was to find out the extent to which the teachers’ acceptance of their stress, modification of teacher’ behaviour and the way teachers’ communicate with students and staff influence their productivity. To this effect, three (03) research questions and three(03) hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The survey sampled the opinion of 150 teachers randomly selected from secondary schools but stratified into the five sub-divisions of Momo Division. A self-constructed 22-item questionnaire was used to collect data. The collected data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. Precisely, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer research questions and verify hypotheses respectively. Specifically, percentages, frequencies and Chi-Square were used at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that there exists a significantly positive relationship between the teachers’ acceptance of their stress and their productivity; there exists a significantly positive relationship between modification of teacher’s behaviour and their productivity; and that there is a significantly positive relationship between the way teachers communicate with students and staff and their productivity. It was recommended amongst others that teachers should have physical activities regularly, be positive and communicate with others in order to reduce stress.

Keywords: Stress management, teachers, productivity and Cameroon