Individual-Organizational Interface (IOI) Interventions to Address Educator Stress

In this chapter we discuss the wide variety of interventions that can be used to achieve a better fit between educators, the demands they face and the resources available to deal with those demands. Individual-Organizational Interface (IOI) interventions often involve collaborative problem-solving and educator capacity building activities that help workers to meet or to change work demands. These interventions are based on solid theoretical foundations and appear to offer the potential to address a number of the stress-related problems commonly encountered by educators. Unfortunately, there is a limited amount of good quality intervention research and very few rigorous evaluation studies of IOI interventions that directly target educators. In this chapter we draw upon what evidence there is in an attempt to summarize the type of IOI interventions that appear likely to be of benefit to educators. We highlight the wider research on some IOI interventions that have been used within other contexts in order to tackle the types of stressors commonly reported by educators. We discuss future avenues for research and identify the practical applications of existing research findings for those currently working as educators.