THE STRESSORS OF THE POST BACCALAUREATE IN TEACHER EDUCATION STUDENTS OF THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-BATAAN BRANCH, SY 2010-2011 TO 2011-2012

The Post Baccalaureate in Teacher Education Program of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines which is also offered in its Bataan Branch is a one-year degree course enabling non-education graduates to take the Licensure Examination for Teachers after its completion, thus giving them the option to shift to the teaching profession. Prior to the conferment of the degree, students are required to pass all the requirements of the curriculum including the Practice Teaching on their last term. Their undergraduate course is considered their major or specialization. Since the subject of the study was second coursers who were either employed or self-employed, and majority was married, they were often heard to complain of stress particularly when they were already engaged in Practice Teaching. The investigation was conceived to find out what were the stressors of the 36 respondents who were enrolled in the program during the Second Semester of School Year (SY) 2010-2011 and SY 2011-2012 respectively and what actually caused their stress so that Teacher Training Institutions can provide the future enrollees of the same program with learning environment and interventions that will provide their students with better learning experiences. The descriptive research method was utilized by the researcher to present the phenomenon. The direction of the research was taken from the works of Clemant (1999), Corcoran (1989), Hemmings and Hockley (2002); Hunter Boykin and Thompson (1993); Piggie and Marso (1998);Schwab (1989); Wadlington, Slaton Partride (1998) and Mee (2009) who examined stress among teacher candidates during the field experience and found it to be a significant issue. There was an agreement on the cited works of these scholars that stress levels were generally high during student teaching. However, in the seven-year study conducted by Piggie and Marso (1998) they found out that teacher candidate’s anxiety decreases as they progress through the teacher preparation program. This was supported by Fives, Ham man, and Olivares (2007) who maintained that the teacher candidates, who experienced high guidance through the levels of support from the education institutions, demonstrated lower levels of burn out at the end of their practicum than candidates with low guidance. Therefore, the study was conducted to find out if similar findings can be drawn from the questionnaire-checklist treated both qualitatively and quantitatively.