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Burnout has elicited growing interest among occupational health specialists in recent decades. Since 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) has characterized burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic, unmanageable workplace [...]

Teachers constitute a vulnerable professional group in terms of the impact of work-related stress on depression. The present study examined flourishing and occupational depression in general education teachers (GETs) and special education teachers (SETs). A sample of 448 Italian teachers (69.6% of SETs), mostly women (85.5%), aged 26-67 (M = 40.32; SD = 9.01), completed the Flourishing Scale and the Occupational Depression Inventory. We found a negative association between flourishing and occupational depression, moderated by role (GETs versus SETs). The negative association between flourishing and occupational depression was stronger for GETs than for SETs. The potential role of individual and occupational factors in mitigating work-related stress and depression is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the overlap in burnout and depression. Method: The sample comprised 1,386 schoolteachers (mean [M][subscript age] = 43; M[subscript years taught] = 15; 77% women) from 18 different U.S. states. We assessed burnout, using the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure, and depression, using the depression module of the Patient Health Questionnaire. Results: Treated dimensionally, burnout and depressive symptoms were strongly correlated (0.77; disattenuated correlation, 0.84). Burnout and depressive symptoms were similarly correlated with each of 3 stress-related factors, stressful life events, job adversity, and workplace support. In categorical analyses, 86% of the teachers identified as burned out met criteria for a provisional diagnosis of depression. Exploratory analyses revealed a link between burnout and anxiety. Conclusions: This study provides evidence that past research has underestimated burnout-depression overlap. The state of burnout is likely to be a form of depression. Given the magnitude of burnout-depression overlap, treatments for depression may help workers identified as "burned out."

The Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI) reflects a novel approach to job-related distress anchored in depression research. To date, the extent to which the ODI exhibits measurement invariance across countries, languages, and demographics is unclear. Measurement invariance refers to whether a measure has the same structure, or meaning, across groups of interest. Measurement invariance is thus crucial for between-group comparisons and study replicability. This study estimated the measurement invariance of the ODI across 14 countries – Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA – and 10 languages as well as across sexes and age groups (pooled N = 12,589). We found evidence for complete measurement invariance (configural, weak, strong, and strict) across countries, languages, sexes, and age groups. Looking into the invariance of structural parameters, we found latent variance-covariance invariance to hold across countries, languages, and sexes and to be equivocal across age groups. Expectedly, the levels of occupational depression, as indexed by latent means, varied within the four categories. Our results indicate that the ODI behaves similarly across countries, languages, sexes, and age groups. Our findings support the use of the ODI with respondents having different cultural backgrounds and individual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chapter examines the ways in which qualitative and quantitative methods support each other in research on occupational stress. Qualitative methods include eliciting from workers unconstrained descriptions of work experiences, careful first-hand observations of the workplace, and participant-observers describing "from the inside" a particular work experience. The chapter shows how qualitative research plays a role in (a) stimulating theory development, (b) generating hypotheses, (c) identifying heretofore researcher-neglected job stressors and coping responses, (d) explaining difficult-to-interpret quantitative findings, and (e) providing rich descriptions of stressful transactions. Extensive examples from research on job stress in teachers are used. The limitations of qualitative research, particularly in the area of verification, are also described. (Contains 6 notes and 2 tables.) ["New Developments in Theoretical and Conceptual Approaches to Job Stress" is published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. This chapter is an expansion of the paper, "Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Occupational Stress Research" Professors Schonfeld and Farrell published in Rossi, A. M., Quick, J. C., & Perrewe, P. L. (Eds.). (2009). "Stress & quality of working life: The positive and the negative." Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.]

Purpose: This paper aims to describe experience gained with a required six-credit year-long course, the Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project, a key component of the Master of Science (MS) in Sustainability degree at the City College of New York. A common feature of sustainability problems is their interdisciplinary nature. Solutions to sustainability problems often require professionals with different training and backgrounds to work as a team. A sustainability curriculum should provide students with the skills needed to competently participate in an interdisciplinary team. Design/Methodology/Approach: Instructors drawn from different departments and divisions of the college developed a pool of sustainability-focused Capstone projects and acted as mentors to teams of students with diverse undergraduate backgrounds. Students attended workshops designed to provide training in teamwork, research and report preparation. An independent evaluator designed an evaluation protocol to assess the course's impact both while it was implemented and after the course was concluded. Findings: Early experience with the program strongly indicates that the Capstone project requirement is an effective learning tool. However, identifying qualified mentors, developing suitable projects, assembling teams and administering the Capstone course are demanding tasks. Although students often experience difficulties in the early stages of their work, they ultimately express satisfaction and appreciation for the skills learned in the course. Practical implications: The inclusion of a capstone team project in a graduate sustainability curriculum is strongly recommended. Adopting such a course requires significant effort and sustained faculty engagement. Originality/value: Although there is considerable experience with undergraduate engineering Capstone course requirements, little is known about interdivisional capstone requirements at the level of master's degree in Sustainability. This paper details new and relevant experience helpful to the implementation of such a requirement.

This daily diary study followed, over a 2-week period, 252 beginning New York City public school teachers. Seventy percent were alternatively certified (New York City Teaching Fellows) and the rest, traditionally certified teachers. Alternatively certified teachers were more likely to experience stressors such as violent incidents and classroom management problems. No differences were found in exposure to stressors/difficulties such as problematic adults, student learning problems, and students experiencing emotional upset. Although differences in the rates of exposure to violent stressors could be explained by other factors (e.g., working in a low-performing school and years of experience), differences in the rates of occurrence of classroom management problems could not. Nevertheless, the high absolute rates of management problems and violence in both groups of teachers were striking and need to be addressed. The authors suggest measures to be taken to address the problem of retaining talented new teachers. (Contains 7 tables.)

The development of rich, reliable, and robust measures of the composition, structure, and stability of student thinking about core scientific ideas (such as natural selection) remains a complex challenge facing science educators. In their recent article (Nehm & Schonfeld 2008), the authors explored the strengths, weaknesses, and insights provided by a detailed exploration of three commonly used measures of student thinking about natural selection in a large sample of underrepresented minority students. One of their core findings was that all of the tools they studied--including the CINS--have strengths and weaknesses that must be carefully taken into consideration by those who employ, interpret, and act upon their outcomes. In this article, the authors offer their reply to Anderson, Fisher, and Smith's (AFS) (2010) article regarding the development and evaluation of the CINS. The authors view Anderson, Fisher, and Smith's defense of the CINS as sacrosanct to be antithetical to the spirit and reality of instrument development, evaluation, improvement. (Contains 2 notes.)

Growing recognition of the central importance of fostering an in-depth understanding of natural selection has, surprisingly, failed to stimulate work on the development and rigorous evaluation of instruments that measure knowledge of it. We used three different methodological tools, the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection (CINS), a modified version of Bishop and Anderson's (Bishop and Anderson [1990] Journal of Research in Science Teaching 27: 415-427) open-response test that we call the Open Response Instrument (ORI), and an oral interview derived from both instruments, to measure biology majors' understanding of and alternative conceptions about natural selection. We explored how these instruments differentially inform science educators about the knowledge and alternative conceptions their students harbor. Overall, both the CINS and ORI provided excellent replacements for the time-consuming process of oral interviews and produced comparable measures of key concept diversity and, to a lesser extent, key concept frequency. In contrast, the ORI and CINS produced significantly different measures of both alternative conception diversity and frequency, with the ORI results completely concordant with oral interview results. Our study indicated that revisions of both the CINS and ORI are necessary because of numerous instrument items characterized by low discriminability, high and/or overlapping difficulty, and mismatches with the sample. While our results revealed that both instruments are valid and generally reliable measures of knowledge and alternative conceptions about natural selection, a test combining particular components of both instruments--a modified version of the CINS to test for key concepts, and a modified version of the ORI to assess student alternative conceptions--should be used until a more appropriate instrument is developed and rigorously evaluated. (Contains 10 tables and 2 figures.)

This study investigated whether or not an increase in secondary science teacher knowledge about evolution and the nature of science gained from completing a graduate-level evolution course was associated with greater preference for the teaching of evolution in schools. Forty-four precertified secondary biology teachers participated in a 14-week intervention designed to address documented misconceptions identified by a precourse instrument. The course produced statistically significant gains in teacher knowledge of evolution and the nature of science and a significant decrease in misconceptions about evolution and natural selection. Nevertheless, teachers' postcourse preference positions remained unchanged; the majority of science teachers still preferred that antievolutionary ideas be taught in school.