Publication:

Effects of stress on academic performance among public secondary school teachers in Kathiani District, Kenya

In today’s knowledge economy the importance of education has been worldwide recognized. All developed countries are spending a major part of their budget on education. Within education system of any country, teachers have vital position as the success of educational institutions is mostly dependent on teachers who educate the most valued assets of the country i.e. students, therefore the teachers performance is fundamental concern of all educational institutions. The teacher’s performance is negatively influenced by different stress contributing factors which either exists within or outside the educational institutions that impede the performance of the teachers resulting in lower. Individual as well as institutional productivity. The purpose of the study was to explore the influence of stress on academic performance among public secondary schools in Kathiani District. Main question discussed in this study were what are t he stress factors which influence academic performance of public secondary school teachers? What are the coping strategies that the public secondary school teachers in Kathiani use to cope with stress? And lastly how does stress affect the academic performance of teachers in Kathiani district. Stress in teaching varies according to ranks held by teachers and the environment they are working. This study examined all the stress factors which influence teacher’s performance in terms of output and satisfaction levels of teachers. The study is significant in that it helped the policy makers and top managers in the ministry of education to have awareness and better understanding of the existence of stress among teachers. It also exposed some problems in schools which led to teachers stress such as workload, high enrolment of students and this enabled the ministry of education to come up with strategies to eradicate this problems. This study was guided by Abraham Maslow (1970) of motivation. This theory helped in exploring various factors which influences teachers academic performance, random sampling technique was used to obtain a sample of 200 teachers. This gave each teacher an equal chance of being included in the sample. On the other hand stratified sampling was used to select 12 schools among 30 public secondary schools in Kathiani district to carry out the research; the researcher used questionnaires and interviews. The questions were prepared in advance and paused in the same way to every participant. The questionnaires were administered to all teachers of the selected sample and they allowed for collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. Interviews were administered to all the principals of selected schools and allowed for collection of quality data. The study elicited information on influence of stress on performance of secondary school teachers. Some of the major findings of the study were that stress factors which influence academic performance of teachers included, work load, poor interpersonal relationship, income policy and management and poor working conditions of schools. Due to poor socio economic background of teachers’ factors such as domestic responsibilities has made them to be stresses and this makes them not to carry out their duties well. The study therefore recommends that teachers should be supported through professional development in engaging with complexion involved, also the working conditions for teachers needs to be improved in order to promote stressful environment so as to enhance the academic performance of teachers.