In this chapter, I look at teacher stress and burnout through the lens of my narrative-biographical research on teacher development (Kelchtermans, 1993a; 1993b). In their retrospective narrative accounts of career experiences, teachers often mention periods of strain, disturbing events, or frustrating situations with stressful effects. I use “stress” in a broad sense, referring to all these aspects of the teaching job that are experienced by teachers as frustrating, dissatisfying, or demotivating. Although I realize that some “stress” might operate positively (e.g., as an extra stimulant to reconsider and eventually change one's teaching practice), my use of the term in this chapter always implies the negative connotation of the word. “Burnout” is seen here as an advanced position on the stress continuum, showing the three facets distinguished by Maslach and Jackson: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach and Jackson, 1984; see also Byrne and Maslach, this volume). In the discussion about the strict conceptual definition of stress and burnout, this is a pragmatic stance, one that focuses on the subjective meaning of these phenomena: the way they are “lived” by the teachers themselves.

This chapter thus has its theoretical roots in the phenomenological and symbolic interactionist tradition (e.g., Blumer, 1969). Stressful events are situations that are subjectively experienced by the teachers as negatively affecting their self-perception and their professional performance.