Stress, in School Administration

Theoretical Framework

In 1976, Joseph McGrath first explained stress as a four-stage, closed-loop process, beginning with situations in the environment perceived by the individual, to which the individual selects the response, resulting in consequences for both the individual and situations, which closes the loop. Each of the four stages is connected by linking process of cognition appraisal: decision, performance, and outcome.

Other models or conceptual frameworks represent hybrids, elaborations, or extensions of the McGrath model. The four stages postulated by McGrath have served as sound building blocks over the past three decades for research on administrator stress. The administrative stress cycle, built on McGrath's foundation, has four stages. The first stage is a set of demands, or stressors, placed on administrators. In 1984, Walter Gmelch and Boyd Swent studied 1855 principals and superintendents and discovered four factors of administrative stress. Over 45 research studies have replicated this study and have found similar types of stress. The first source, role-based stress, is perceived from administrators' role-set interactions and beliefs or attitudes about their roles in schools. The second source, task based stress, arises from the performance of day-to-day administrative activities, from telephone and staff interruptions, meetings, writing memos and reports, to participating in school activities outside of the normal working hours. The third source, boundary-spanning stress, emanates from external conditions, such as negotiations and gaining public support for school budgets. Boundaryspanning stress appears to be unique to the field of school administration. Conflict-mediating stress is the fourth source. This type of stress arises from the administrator handling conflicts within the school such as trying to resolve differences between and among students, resolving parent and school conflicts, and handing student discipline problems.

The second state consists of perceptions or interpretation of the stressors by administrators. Those who perceive demands as harmful or demanding will create stress within their lives and approach their work with intensity. Certain personality types, such as Type A behavior, accentuate the stress and create conditions impacting the health of administrators.

The third stage of the cycle presents choices to the administrators. If they perceive the stressors to be harmful, threatening, or demanding, they will respond to them physiologically or psychologically. Most data-based studies have investigated sources of stress (Stage 1), while fewer have addressed how educators cope with their job pressures. However, the general literature on coping is significant in volume and diverse in attention and addresses popular and academic concerns as well as conceptual, theoretical, and empirical investigations.

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