Creative Education, 2021, 12, 1273-1295 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ce ISSN Online: 2151-4771 ISSN Print: 2151-4755 DOI: 10.4236/ce.2021.126096 Jun. 17, 2021 1273 Creative Education Teacher Stress and Coping Strategies—The Struggle to Stay in Control Einar M. Skaalvik 1,2 , Sidsel Skaalvik 2 1 NTNU Social Research, Trondheim, Norway 2 Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Abstract This qualitative interview study explored primary and middle school teachers’ perceptions of job demands, how they responded to the demands, and which strategies they used to cope with the demands. The participating teachers re- ported multiple demands, resulting in high levels of stress and emotional ex- haustion. Several of the demands could be traced back to structural and orga- nizational conditions at the schools. The analyses also showed that the teach- ers used five main strategies to cope with the demands: hard working strate- gies, recovering strategies, reducing the workload strategies, job crafting strategies, and help seeking strategies. Keywords Teacher Stress, Job Demands, Coping Strategies 1. Introduction Research during the last couple of decades has shown that, although rewarding, teaching is a stressful occupation and teacher stress is an international pheno- menon (Chan, 2002; Johnson, Cooper, Cartwright, Donald, Taylor, & Millet, 2005; Liu & Onwuegbuzie, 2012; Montgomery & Rupp, 2005; Skaalvik & Skaal- vik, 2017a, 2017b; Stoeber & Rennert, 2008). Conditions in the school environ- ment that are associated with stress are workload or time pressure, student di- versity, discipline problems, low student motivation, value conflicts, lack of rec- ognition, lack of shared decision making, lack of autonomy, conflicts with col- leagues, parents, or the school administration, lack of administrative support, low pay and low status (e.g., Betoret, 2009; Fernet, Guay, Senécal, & Austin, 2012; Friedman, 1995; Hakanen, Bakker, & Schaufeli, 2006; Klassen & Chiu, 2011; Kokkinos, 2007; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2009, 2011, 2015). Such conditions How to cite this paper: Skaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2021). Teacher Stress and Cop- ing Strategies—The Struggle to Stay in Control. Creative Education, 12, 1273-1295. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2021.126096 Received: May 14, 2021 Accepted: June 14, 2021 Published: June 17, 2021 Copyright © 2021 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access