Occupational Difficulties at Work of Physical Education Teachers

Abstract

Research background and hypothesis. In recent years, the phenomenon of stress and burnout among physical
education  teachers  has  been  evidenced  by  researchers  from  many  countries.  It  should  be  noted  that  all  those
studies about work difficulties of physical education teachers are individual. However, despite a large number of
studies conducted and the progress made in this area, a universally accepted survey identifying five most important
difficulties in physical education teachers’ work usually defined in contemporary studies still does not exist. This
is mainly because there is still no consensus either on the decisive factors causing those difficulties for physical
education teachers or what the central symptoms actually are.
Research aim was (a) to review and (b) to identify five most important difficulties in  physical education teachers’
work usually defined in contemporary studies.
Research methods. This review examines research literature concerning the causes of stress and burnout of
physical education teachers from the year 1999 to 2009 applying computer-aided literature search. The keywords
used for the electronic search were “stress” and “burnout” or “job satisfaction” and “physical education teacher”. The
main method of our research was logical deductive research literature analysis.
Discussion and conclusions. Research literature review allowed identifying physical education teachers’ work
difficulties (we found 24 of them). We established that the five most important difficulties in  physical education
teachers’ work usually defined in contemporary studies were as follows: low status of physical education; limited
equipment, facilities and supplies; lack of time; large class sizes and excessive daily workloads.

Keywords: burnout, job satisfaction, physical education teacher, stress.