Bermejo, L., Prieto, M., Hernández, V., Gismero, E., Cagigal, V. y García-Mina, A. Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid (Spain) INTRODUCTION Nowadays teachers frequently have to cope with stressful situations that can affect their psychological welfare at work. Among the situations they identify as more stressful are mainly: pupils´ behavioural problems, work overload and lack of time to perform the different tasks and the conflict and ambiguity in the teacher’s role (Hakanen, Bakker and Schaufeli, 2006; Manassero et al., 2005; Marqués, Lima and Lopes, 2005; Salanova, Martínez and Lorente, 2005). Furthermore teachers find resources available to them - both, personal and institutional, very limited to face these stressful situations at work. Moreover, they state to have received little initial and ongoing training in this sense (Marqués et al. 2005; Van der Doef and Maes, 2002). For all these reasons, this work tries to analyze what coping strategies are used by teachers to face up stressful situations, specifically to cope with work overload. We will focus on coping strategies of cognitive and behavioural nature because particularly cognitive coping strategies have been merely analyzed in previous research. PARTICIPANTS In order to carry out this study, we have taken an incidental sample of non-probabilistic character of 246 teachers of Madrid Community (Spain) of which 31% are men and 69% women. The average age of the sample is 39.3 years old (sd=10,8) and represent an average of 13.7 years of teaching experience (sd=10.9). 69% of respondents work in private (paid by users) and semi-private centres (Private School that receives public funds) and 31% in public centres (paid by the Public Administration). Regarding education levels, 43.3% (N=106) are kindergarten or primary school teachers and 56.7% (N=139) are secondary school teachers. TEACHERS´ COPING STRATEGIES TO FACE WORK OVERLOAD* CONCLUSION In conclusion, it seems that teachers of our sample use cognitive coping strategies related with a proactive solution for the problem and refuse to use more avoiding or passive strategies. As far as behavioural coping strategies they used more frequently it appears that based on action strategies and assertive strategies are predominant. As a whole, these predominantly used cognitive and behavioural strategies are consider effective to reduce tension due to work overload. In this way, we would like to emphasize the importance that the data of this study can provide to the design of the processes of teachers’ initial and ongoing training. Our work points out the usefulness of offering training programmes and personal consulting in both, the study programmes of the new grades in Kindergarten and Primary Education and Secondary School Teacher Training Master as well as performance assessment programmes addressed to practicing professionals. Such training programmes could primarily contribute to provide teachers gaining the coping strategies that result more effective to face potentially stressful situations they might need to face in their professional activity. Finally, for future researches it would be very interesting to go a bit deeper in the study of the relationship of all these coping strategies with teachers’ wellbeing (low burnout and high work engagement), developing more complex and specific models. MEASURES Assessment was carried out through a questionnaire where a stressful situation was posed (work overload: having to do many different tasks in only one day, such as, preparing classes, explaining an issue, correcting exams, interviewing families, etc). Questionnaire also assessed the level of perceived tension due to this stressor, participants primary evaluation of this situation (damage, threat or challenge) and secondary evaluation (perceived efficacy to successfully cope with the situation). Coping strategies were assessed through Brief COPE (Carver, 1997) and other items designed ad hoc. The response scale of these tools six alternatives, from 1 (Not at all) to 6 (A lot). Finally we asked participants for the cognitive and behavioural strategy they predominantly used and for perceived efficacy of these preferred strategies. * THIS RESEARCH BELONGS TO “WELL-BEING TEACHING PROJECT” (SEJ ) AND HAS BEEN FINANCED BY SPANISH MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESULTS Figure 1. Primary Evaluation Figure 2. Perceived tension and Secondary Evaluation Figure 3. Efficacy of the Predominant Cognitive Coping Strategy Figure 4. Efficacy of the Predominant Behavioural Coping Strategy Figure 6. Predominant behavioural coping strategies (Means, Standard deviations, level of perceived efficacy and frequency) Figure 5. Predominant cognitive coping strategies (Means, Standard deviations, level of perceived efficacy and frequency) PROCEDURE Our methodology is of non-experimental nature. It is an ex-post-facto study. The design corresponds to a strategy of trans-sectional type. Teachers answered questionnaire during the term. Results showed that for 70% of the sample work overload was an important source of tension. However 65% considered it as a challenge and approximately 91% considered themselves fairly or very capable to cope successfully. 79.7% considered that their more commonly used cognitive strategies result effective to reduce the tension they experience facing overload. Moreover, 77.2% of the sample considered that the behavioural strategies more frequently used by teachers are effective to reduce the tension they experience against work overload. As far as the cognitive coping strategies predominantly used by teachers it appears: “I tried to come up with a strategy about what to do” (17.4%) “I think about the maximum number of solutions or alternatives to tackle the problem” (13%) “I plan one or several realistic and specific objectives regarding the situation” (10%). They consider these cognitive strategies highly effective to reduce tension. Concerning the behavioural coping strategies predominately used by teachers it appears: “I make additional efforts to try to improve the situation (I take work at home, I think about it outside work, I remain longer at work, etc)” (23.8%), “Under these circumstances, I make a list of priorities and focus on the most important” (17.9%) “I take action to try to make the situation better” (11.5%). These behavioural strategies are frequently consider by teachers highly effective.