(PS11-A24) Examining Factors That Moderate the Relationship Between Male Students’ ADHD Behaviors and Teacher Stress

Teachers experience high amounts of daily stress, which is associated with job dissatisfaction, attrition from the field, and other negative outcomes for teachers, as well as their students. One of the strongest contributors to teacher stress is disruptive student behavior. Student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are present in practically every classroom (Danielson et al., 2020) and account for a high proportion of disruptive student behavior (Owens et al., 2018). Greene and colleagues (2002) found that teachers perceive their students with ADHD to be more stressful to teach than students without ADHD. However, little is known about what factors moderate the relationship between ADHD behavior and teacher stress. The goal of this study was to replicate previous findings (i.e., Greene et al. 2002) and examine possible moderators the relationship between students’ ADHD behavior and teacher stress. Participants were 97 teachers (76% female; 64% White) recruited through Qualtrics Online Sample Service in fall 2021. They completed measures about themselves and about two male students in their current classroom, one that exhibits high levels of ADHD symptoms and one that does not. The dependent variable was the teacher domain of the Index of Teaching Stress (ITS; Greene et al., 1997), which measures teachers’ stress when working with a particular student. Findings from Greene and colleagues (2002) were replicated; teachers reported perceiving students with elevated ADHD symptoms as being more stressful to teach than those without (t(96)=15.026, p < .001, d = 1.53). Linear regression analyses assessing moderating factors revealed a significant interaction between ADHD and closeness in the student-teacher relationship (β =-0.21, p< .001), and a significant interaction between ADHD and conflict in the student-teacher relationship (β =.18, p< .001). Namely, high amounts of closeness mitigated the relationship between ADHD and teacher stress, and high amounts of conflict exacerbated the relationship between ADHD and teacher stress. Analyses of additional moderators will be presented, as well. Preliminary results suggest that using strategies (e.g., refs) to increase the quality of the student-teacher relationship may mitigate teacher stress associated with ADHD, which is especially important considering the increased stress that teachers have been facing due to the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (Steiner & Woo, 2021).