Article Review

Joseph (2000) defined emotional distress as an excess of demand made upon the
adaptive capabilities of the mind and body which is seen in the form of physical demand, a
mental demand or both. Teachers are the essential assets of any country could have. They
impart knowledge and skills to the students. However, recent global changes have resulted in
creation of new challenges in terms of global competition and technology advancement which
have hardly hit the educational sector without any exemption. As a result, the teachers are
under immense pressure to meet the expectations of the stakeholders.
Due to the matter, teachers are exposed to certain unwanted internal and external
environmental factors which resulting in emotional distress. This will then result in retrogression
of the teachers performance and satisfaction level will also decrease and thus the overall
productivity of the education system is suffered. In other words, emotional distress has negative
effects on the performance of teachers. There are many factors that lead to the emotional
distress among teachers and this includes students disciplinary problems, parents high
expectation as well as burdened by the workload. Besides that, lack of motivation can also
contribute to the emotional distress among teachers.
When the emotional distress kicks in, teachers focus on their teaching profession will be
disrupted as they will do anything that can end their pressure even if it means to violate the
rules and teaching ethics such as skip work. Teacher will tend to avoid things that put them
under pressure, so by skipping work they are able to do that (Antoniou, 2000). If it is did
regularly by teachers, possibility to be dismissed from the teaching profession will happen.
Consequently, the teachers selfish action will result in disruption of the students teaching and
learning process.
Other than that, teachers will also make a decision to quit their job because they are
unable to withstand with emotional distress due to the students disciplinary problem, heavy
workloads as well as high demands and expectations from the parents. If teachers are having
the thought to leave the teaching profession, it shows that the teachers are no longer interested
in shaping the future generations (McCaughtry & Rovegno, 2003). This means that the teachers
will have lack of motivation to teach the young children and might abandon their teaching and
learning. At the same time, students motivation to learn will also decrease if the teachers are
not interested in teaching them. According to Rosnah (2003), teachers who are under emotional

distress are unable to transmit their positive feelings towards the students. Thus, the inability to
transmit the positive feelings can trigger disruptive behaviour among students which will make
the teachers in a state of pressure even more.
In a nutshell, if the teachers are unable to control themselves and fail to handle the
emotional distress that they are experiencing, certainly they will have to end their career and
disciplinary action will be taken against them. It is true that the world of education is changing
day by day and so do teachers role. However, not everyone can change drastically which result
in emotional distress and consequently, the education system in Malaysia will be suffered.