Stress in teaching: a study of occupational stress and its determinants among Italian schoolteachers

This paper presents the findings of an investigation into stress among Italian teachers conducted by means of the Teacher Stress Questionnaire elaborated by Travers and Cooper. The questionnaire was submitted to 320 southern Italy teachers drawn from a cross‐section of school types. Data were discussed in order to highlight some features of teacher stress peculiar to the Italian sample with respect to those that emerged in the British validation of the questionnaire. In this perspective a comparison was drawn between the intensity and quality of mental ill‐health, the sources of job pressure, the intensity and quality of job satisfaction and the coping strategies adopted by teachers as emerged in this study and in the British study; and between the most predictive dimensions of mental ill‐health highlighted from the present study with respect to the British study. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.