Teacher Job Stress, Burnout & Creativity

Lumsden (1998) has noted that teachers are currently being stretched to the limit of their capabilities and capacities. Specifically, Lumsden states, teachers are being challenged by growing expectations, expansions of their job role and tasks, and having to deal with an ongoing and increasing array of social problems making their way into classrooms. The result of these challenges as well as several other problematic job factors has been teacher stress and burnout.

Carter (1999) defines teacher burnout as physical, emotional and attitudinal exhaustion, stating that burnout begins with a feeling of uneasiness. This feeling steadily increases as the joy of teaching begins to gradually slip away. Carter further informs that although the symptoms of burnout may be very personal, they commonly include several symptoms such as lack of energy, joy, enthusiasm, satisfaction, motivation, interest, zest, dreams, and ideas. There is also often difficulties association with concentration, a lowering of self-confidence and a depletion of humor.

In addition, Carter (1999) reports that the consequences of teacher burnout extend beyond the personal psychoemotional toll. Burnout can also lead to turnover, or to teachers remaining on the job till retirement, but having only minimal concern about their students and minimal commitment to their work. Further, Carter states that unenthusiastic, burned out teachers can act as an obs

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n, 1994) which is why there exists several different instruments for measuring creativity and none of them can predict creative behavior with even moderate levels of accuracy (Matlin, 1994). In the early literature, Guilford (1967) defined creativity as an aspect of intelligence in which a creative person was said to be an individual who could think of many different, often novel, responses to a particular question or test item; Guilford called this type of thinking "divergent production." Torrance and Goff (1990) expanded on Guilford's notions, stating that creative thinking involves several abilities including evaluation (especially the ability to sense problems, inconsistencies, and missing elements); divergent production (e.g., fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration in responsiveness); and redefinition of concepts, constructs and terms. According to Torrance and Goff, creative thinking can be learned; and it is most likely to be learned when educators inspire students' natural curiosity and excitement about their tasks. Applying this to teachers, it might be said that teachers can learn how to be more creative in accomplishing their job tasks provided they can be made more excited about their jobs and curious as
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