Examining the Coping Styles of Teachers and Students to Gain Insights into Their Well-Being

In today’s VUCA world which is embroiled in uncertainty, teachers and students are enduring a lot of stress. Due to this their performance and well-being are affected, which is detrimental to the educational environment. In line with the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals, policymakers have to design interventions to mitigate the stress levels of teachers and students. While enduring stress, individuals use different coping styles namely active coping, positive reframing, using emotional support, using social support, etc. Research studies have reported that the problem-focused coping style promotes well-being, the social support-focused style fosters an inclination toward problem-focused coping, and the avoidance-focused style decreases the well-being of individuals. Hence knowledge of coping styles used by individuals is essential to design interventions that promote well-being. A review of the literature revealed only a couple of studies on the coping styles of teachers and students in the Indian context. To address this lacuna, the study aims to examine the coping styles of teachers and students, to gain insights into enhancing their well-being. The sample for the study included 101 faculty members and 92 students from the Government and private colleges of South India. The Brief-COPE was used to assess the coping styles adopted by the respondents. It has 28 items to capture fourteen coping styles, which are then categorized into four major types of coping. The study found that the teachers are using problem-focused and emotion-focused styles whereas the students are using emotion-focused and social-support-focused coping styles. The K-means clustering of the respondents revealed interesting insights into the coping styles, which could be leveraged for designing interventions. This study has important implications and recommendations to improve the well-being of teachers and students in higher education institutions.