Opis
This book is dedicated to all scholars from all over the world that choose very difficult profession and struggle nowadays with "publish and perish" academic culture. The empirical study presented in the book focuses on academic teacher stress. We applied qualitative research design to identify stressors experienced by scholars employed at Polish universities. These stressors referred to such main categories, as: teaching, workplace, research, pressures, conflicts and collaboration. The academic collaboration was found as highly stressful factor due to a variety of reasons, however networking appears to be a leverage to academic career, especially while confronted with recently observable strong pressure to publish in top-tier journals. This book emphasizes the complexity of academic stress and networking and suggests facilitating these aspects in policy making in higher education. Spis treściINTRODUCTION 9CHAPTER ONESTRESS IN THE WORK OF ACADEMIC TEACHERS - THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE 13The nature of teacher stress 13Research on teacher stress 14Defi ning teacher stress and related notions 15Sources of teacher stress 18Sources of teacher stress according to Kyriacou 19Scholar's individual features determining their proneness to stress 31Cross-cultural differences and stress 37The symptoms of teacher stress 38The effects of teacher stress 41CHAPTER TWORESEARCH DESIGN WITH REGARD TO FACTORS INFLUENCING ON ACADEMIC STRESS 47The research gap 47The study objectives and general research approach 48Research population 50Informants' selection 51Informants' characteristics 51Field research procedure 52Interviewing individuals 53Focus group interview 57Data analysis 58Appendix: Part 1. The scenario of an in-depth interview with an academic teacher 60Appendix: Part 2. Scenario of a focus group interview with academic teachers 65CHAPTER THREEFACTORS EVOKING STRESS AMONG ACADEMIC TEACHERS - QUALITATIVE STUDY RESULTS 67Stressors associated with teaching at university 68Discipline problems 68Problematic students 69The lack of student motivation 71Marking 72Stressors associated with the workplace 73The atmosphere in the workplace 73Rat race among teachers 74University authorities and administration 74More experienced colleagues 76Inspections 76Change 77Stressors associated with being a researcher 78Doing research 78Writing peer reviewed papers 79Applying for funds 79Reading and writing in English language 80Attending conferences 81Stressors associated with pressures exerted over academic teachers 81Exam pressure 82Time pressures 83Overload and bureaucracy 83Stressors associated with conflicts 85Role conflicts 85Work-family conflicts 86Teaching/research conflicts 87CHAPTER FOURCOLLABORATION AS A STRESSOR AND A LEVERAGE FOR ACADEMIC SUCCESS 89The meaning of academic collaboration - what do we know so far? 91Growing interest in academic collaboration as the research phenomenon 91The multidimensional picture of networking in academia 93The link between networking and the scholar's success 94Academic collaboration as a stressor and a leverage to scholar's career - results of a focus group interview 99Aspects of academic collaboration causing stress of scholars 99Collaboration as a leverage to scholar's career 105CHAPTER SUMMARY 109CONCLUSIONS 111APPENDIX: AN EXEMPLARY TRANSCRIPT OF AN IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW 115BIBLIOGRAPHY 123