Chapter 5: Teachers’ Stress and Gender Perceptions of Challenging Student Behavior

In this study we analyze the stress levels of 582 elementary teachers in the Netherlands. Teachers rated the most challenging student in their classroom on six different behavioral components: Against the grain, Full of activity/Easily distractible, Needs a lot of attention/Weak student, Easily upset, Failure syndrome/Excessively perfectionist, and Aggressive/Hostile. Teachers also scored their perceived stress as a result of these problematic student behaviors. Our data suggest that although male students are more likely to be selected as the most challenging student, little evidence is found to support the notion that teachers differentiate between boys and girls in terms of the incidence of these behaviors or perceived levels of stress. Further, data support the finding that female teachers report significantly higher incidence of behavior problems for the most challenging student, however, no differences are observed between male and female teachers in their reported experience of stress.