The primary objective of this study was to examine the predictive power of occupational stress for teaching approaches. Participants were 246 faculty members from a large university in Guangzhou in the People's Republic of China, who completed the Approaches to Teaching Inventory, four scales from the Occupational Stress Inventory-Revised (assessing role overload, role insufficiency, psychological strain, and rational/cognitive coping), and the Self-rated Ability Scale. Results suggested that after the participants' self-rated abilities were controlled for, the combination of role overload and the use of rational/cognitive coping was conducive to the conceptual-change teaching approach (both intention and strategy), and that role insufficiency negatively predicted the conceptual-change teaching strategy. Furthermore, together, rational/cognitive coping and psychological strain contributed to an information-transmission teaching strategy. The implications of these findings for university academics and for university senior managers are discussed. (Contains 3 tables.)