Teacher Appraisals of Demand-Resource Imbalances in Racially Concentrated Schools: An Extension of Transactional Theory With Black, Hispanic, and White U.S. Teachers

The transactional theory posits that when teachers appraise classroom demands as exceeding classroom resources, they are at a higher risk for stress. However, researching appraisals is challenging because they result from individual interpretation and can vary across workplace settings. The goal of this study was to better understand the teacher appraisal process in the context of diverse racial/ethnic school environments in the United States. Black, Hispanic, and White teachers' classroom appraisals, job satisfaction, and workplace fatigue were examined in schools where teachers' self-reported race/ethnicity was congruent or incongruent with the predominant racial/ethnic demography of their schools. The participants in this study (N = 25,420) were full-time, public school teachers who responded to the National Center for Education Statistics 2015-2016 National Teacher Principal Survey. Main effects for differences in appraisals by teachers' race/ethnicity and building demography were found, indicating White teachers tended to appraise classroom demands as higher relative to resources than Black or Hispanic teachers across all school types, and all three teacher race/ethnicity groups tended to appraise classroom demands as higher than resources in majority Black or Hispanic schools-all of which indicated a higher risk for stress. Higher job satisfaction and lower workplace fatigue were also reported in majority White schools. Interactions between teacher race/ethnicity and building demography were also found.