teaching profession, workload, stress, optimism, self-confidence

This paper examines the effect of dispositional optimism and self-confidence on primary school teachers? perception of their own working conditions and the demands placed on them at work; these are viewed as phenomena which probably influence teachers? adaptation to the demands placed upon them both at and outside the workplace. Using a sample of 481 teachers from the upper tier of the primary school system at various locations in the Czech Republic, it was found that the level of self-confidence and dispositional optimism shows a statistically significant correlation with the perception of work-related and non-work-related load. The relation between dispositional optimism/self-confidence and the evaluation of work-related and non-work-related load is thus not random; nevertheless, the values of the correlation coefficients show that teachers? perception of load is related not only to optimism and self-confidence, but also to additional factors not covered by this research.