Experiences, Psychological Distress and Coping among Teachers of Students with Learning Difficulties

Abstract

The study investigated teachers’ experiences, psychological distress and coping strategies adopted in educating children with learning problems. A mixed-method approach was adopted for the study. One hundred and forty-seven participants were sampled from special and inclusive schools for the quantitative study. Participants responded to items on questionnaires measuring psychological distress and coping. The qualitative study involved one-on-one interviews with 10 teachers. The quantitative study revealed that teachers’ coping strategies were negatively related to psychological distress. Special school teachers experienced more anxiety than regular school teachers, however, there was no difference in their depression levels. Additionally, gender had no influence on psychological distress among special school teachers and years of teaching did not influence teachers’ coping strategies. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data indicated that teachers had some knowledge about learning difficulties and identified students with difficulties based on observation. Challenges teachers faced impacted their health. Both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping were used to deal with distress. Social support was found to be the main school coping resources available to teachers. These findings were discussed using the theory of learned helplessness, the transactional stress and coping model, relevant cultural factors as well as related studies. The implications of the study were discussed. The high number of special school teachers than regular school teachers was a major limitation with regard to recruitment.