Stress among Teachers in Virtual Classrooms Working in the Higher Education Sector during the COVID-19 Outbreak

ABSTRACT

Teaching is one of the most stressful professions since teachers have many responsibilities to meet the targets such as teaching, lesson planning, classroom management and discipline, supervisory role, extracurricular activity, etc. However, during the COVID-19 outbreak, teaching has become challenging for professional teachers. A total number of 85 professional teachers were screened, by which 73 subjects provided informed consent to take part in the study and were included in the study. A stress questionnaire developed by International Stress Management Association UK (ISMA) was used to assess the stress among professional teachers. Among the 50 subjects, five subjects had a history of hypertension, one subject had diabetes mellitus, 11 subjects had low back pain, five subjects had knee pain, and two subjects had migraine. The stress assessment questionnaire revealed that 64% of subjects were towards moderate risk, 34% high risk, and 2% low risk for stress. The present study concludes that professional teachers are at moderate to high risk of developing occupational-related stress associated with health-related problems.