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Teacher’s self-talk : an examination of teacher’s use of self-talk and its impact on anxiety and job satisfaction

University of British Columbia

A cognitive-behavioral intervention, specifically focusing on self-talk, was designed to help teachers cope with anxiety. This study examined the nature of teacher self-talk and the efficacy of an intervention program, based on stress inoculation training, in the treatment of teacher stress and job satisfaction. The participants (17 females and 2 males) were full-time elementary and junior high classroom teachers assigned to a treatment group or a waitlist control group. The intervention program consisted of six 90-minute sessions conducted over six weeks. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Bagg, & Jacobs, 1983), the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire - Revised (Kendall, Howard, & Hays, 1989), and the Job Satisfaction sub-scale of the Teacher Stress Inventory-Revised (Schutz & Long, 1988) were administered at pre, post, and one month follow-up. It was predicted that from pre to post participants in the treatment group would show greater change in the measures than the participants in the waitlist control group. Using the States of Mind (SOM) model (Schwartz & Garamoni, 1986) it was further predicted that all participants would report a greater frequency of negative self-talk than positive selftalk at pretest. The results indicated that participants used more positive self-talk than negative self-talk at pretest, and that participants reported self-talk in the SOM range of positive monologue. Although dependent variables changed in the expected directions, repeated measures analysis of variance did not reveal significant interactions for the dependent variables. However, significant time effects emerged for positive and negative self-talk, for anxiety, but not for job satisfaction. Clinically significant change in anxiety was reported for 13 of 17 participants. Anxiety was significantly correlated with positive and negative self-talk; whereas, job satisfaction significantly correlated with negative self-talk. Although the increase in the ratio of positive self-talk and the reduction in anxiety may be due to treatment effects, the results failed to reach significance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-02-17

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4669

Counselling Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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