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Navigating Stress In Public Education: A Personal Reflection And Narrative Study Of My Closest Relationships In Teaching, Stephen I. Smith

Open Access Theses

This study originally intended to explore the various effects of burnout – defined by the researcher as the steady decline of joy and increase of stress associated with teaching – on secondary school teachers. Using narrative inquiry, the researcher’s story and that of three other male eighth grade junior high school teachers close to him shaped the core of the study. Students the researcher taught in a first year undergraduate course exploring teaching as a career were also surveyed to look for any possible link between preservice teacher enthusiasm and the harsh realities of teaching. A question addressed was if …