ESTRESSE E ESTRATÉGIAS DE ENFRENTAMENTO DE DOCENTES DO NÍVEL SUPERIOR

Abstract

This dissertation sought to understand the stress, personality and coping used by teachers of a higher education institution in the city of Goiânia - Goiás. It is organized into three articles, being the first one is a systematic literature review, and the others, empirical research studies. The objective of the review was to present an overview of national and international productions on stress, leadership style, confrontation and instructors, based on articles published and indexed between the years 2005 and 2014. In 94 selected articles, it was observed that, despite the huge amount of papers about stress, leadership styles and coping, only a few dealt with the relationship between the influence of leadership styles and the stress generation in employees, especially those in higher education. Furthermore, there is a lack of papers that evaluates the strategies of psychological coping used by the employees who suffer stress due to the management style. Articles written in English were the closest studies to the scope of this research. Publications in Brazil are still incipient. Regarding the first empirical study, the objective was to identify the level of occupational stress, the stressors and the psychological coping strategies of 64 higher education teachers. The results presented low and medium levels of occupational stress, and the most frequent stressors were: insufficient time to achieve the workload; few prospects for career growth; anger with the deficiency in the trainings; and irritation with the little information about organizational decisions. The most used coping were: problem solving; social support; escape-avoidance; positive reassessment; and acceptance of responsibility. There was also a positive correlation between withdrawal and stress and escape-avoidance and stress. It was concluded that teachers have low and moderate levels of occupational stress. Regarding to coping, it was observed that the cognitive and behavioral efforts adopted manage the way teachers perceive what is happening around them. The second empirical research aimed to identify the level of occupational stress, personality factors also the correlation between occupational stress, personality and sociodemographic variables of 64 higher education teachers. The results pointed low and moderate levels of occupational stress. As a personality factor, neuroticism was the most found among teachers. In addition, there were no correlations between stress and ordinal sociodemographic data. Regarding the correlation between nominal sociodemographic data and personality factors, only the correlation between marital status and personality factors was observed, and neuroticism was the only factor that has not reached significance. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between the neuroticism factor and the stress. It was concluded that teachers are in low and moderate levels of stress, and that the study of personality factors is of extreme importance in order to create a quality of life program in a way directed to these professionals.