Spiritual Practices as a Means of Coping with and Ameliorating Stress to Reduce Teacher Attrition

Abstract

Teacher attrition has been a serious problem in maintaining quality education in the United States. Although the research produced extensive documentation on teachers' stress and attrition, little attention has been paid to their spiritual stress coping strategies. This article documents various spiritual practices as a means of coping with stress employed by teachers with religious beliefs and illustrates how they process stress using spiritual practices. Many teachers report managing professional stress through spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, and reading devotionals or scripture. The findings suggest implications for public and private, especially Christian, teacher preparation, professional development, and future research.

Notes

Note. N = 317; 26 is the maximum combination of missing/discarded values and don't know responses for any item.

Note. Missing/Discarded values and Don't Know responses are subtracted from the sample size (N = 317), prior to the calculation of the valid % for the Likert scale categories of each item. aFrequency of missing or discarded values. bFrequency of don't know responses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

JAMES M. M. HARTWICK

James M. M. Hartwick is Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, Wisconsin, USA.

SHIN JI KANG

Shin Ji Kang is Associate Professor at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA.