Female teachers’ experiences of performing concurrent roles at work and home and studying its effect on their teaching

This study concerns female teachers’ experiences of conducting simultaneous roles at work and home and its effects on their teaching performance. The research adopted a qualitative approach and the target group was a sample of 20 female teachers who were selected through a purposeful sampling method. The teachers in this sample were married، had children، and having had performed more than five years of teaching experience at high-school level in the city of Ezeh. The findings showed they mainly suffer from an overwhelming pressure of the conflicts between their various roles at work and home. They experienced different scenarios of conflict، stress، and feeling of failure in diverse aspects of their roles. As their husbands do not mainly contribute to housework، this lack of support is one of the major contextual elements in creating such stressful situation. Their experiences of work-family conflict have been reflected in two main categories of ineffective teaching and selecting teaching as their carrier. Female teachers had to employ a number of coping strategies to overcome the pressure and stress in their roles which finally had a negative impact on their teaching performance and students’ learning. Moreover، their assumptions about the features of teaching as a profession، including not working with men and to have more free time to spend on housework، was one of the reasons which led to this situation. Finally، the paper concludes that existence of a number of contextual elements and the conflicts between their roles at work and home cause an ineffective teaching in the target group in this study.
This study concerns female teachers’ experiences of conducting simultaneous roles at work and home and its effects on their teaching performance. The research adopted a qualitative approach and the target group was a sample of 20 female teachers who were selected through a purposeful sampling method. The teachers in this sample were married، had children، and having had performed more than five years of teaching experience at high-school level in the city of Ezeh. The findings showed they mainly suffer from an overwhelming pressure of the conflicts between their various roles at work and home. They experienced different scenarios of conflict، stress، and feeling of failure in diverse aspects of their roles. As their husbands do not mainly contribute to housework، this lack of support is one of the major contextual elements in creating such stressful situation. Their experiences of work-family conflict have been reflected in two main categories of ineffective teaching and selecting teaching as their carrier. Female teachers had to employ a number of coping strategies to overcome the pressure and stress in their roles which finally had a negative impact on their teaching performance and students’ learning. Moreover، their assumptions about the features of teaching as a profession، including not working with men and to have more free time to spend on housework، was one of the reasons which led to this situation. Finally، the paper concludes that existence of a number of contextual elements and the conflicts between their roles at work and home cause an ineffective teaching in the target group in this study.