Teaching Practicum -induced Stress and Coping Strategies among Pre-service Teachers in Colleges of Education in Ghana

The teaching profession is associated with stress for teachers, so it is crucial that practice teachers be aware of the realities of teaching as they prepare to become professional and licensed teachers. The study examined the stress and coping strategies of pre-service teachers during teaching practice in colleges of education in the Bono Region of Ghana. Questionnaire was used to collect data from 267 final year pre-service teachers. The internal consistency reliability of the piloted questionnaire was 0.716. Factor analysis using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation and descriptive statistics were used for the data analysis. Independent sample t-test was conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings revealed that teaching practice related stressors are predominantly related to psychosocial, health and academic stressors. The study discovered that pre-service teachers engaged in recreational coping, self-care coping and social support coping. The t-test analysis showed a statistically no significant difference in gender with regard to coping strategies used by pre-service teachers. Key recommendations include providing stress management programs and counselling for pre-service teachers on teaching practice. Again, administrators of initial teacher education institutions should give seminars and provide essential training for heads and mentors of schools that host pre-service teachers to enable them understand the role limitations of pre-service teachers to avoid role overload of pre-service teachers during teaching practicum.