Psychologists of children's educational institutions have to deal with many problems. However, one of the most common of them is school anxiety. This negative state must be detected in a timely manner. After all, it has a negative impact on many areas relating to the condition of the child. This is his he alth, and communication with teachers and peers, and academic performance in the classroom, and the behavior of a small person both within the walls of the educational institution and beyond.
What is this phenomenon?
The word "alarming" first appeared in dictionaries dated 1771. To date, researchers have put forward many versions that explain the origin of this term. One of them deciphers this concept as a threat signal issued by the enemy three times.
Psychological Dictionary explains the term "anxiety" as an individual feature of the human psyche, which consists in his tendency to show anxiety when a variety of life situations arise, including those that do not even predispose to it.
But keep in mind that anxiety and anxiety are different terms. If the first concept means only an episodic manifestation of the excitement and anxiety of the child, then the second is a stable state.
Anxiety is not associated with a specific situation. It shows up almost all the time. A similar state accompanies a person when he performs any type of activity.
Main symptoms
School anxiety is a fairly broad concept. It includes various aspects of the student's emotional distress that are stable. School anxiety is expressed in increased anxiety that occurs in educational situations, as well as in the classroom. The child is in constant expectation of a negative assessment that peers and teachers will give him, and also believes that others treat him rather badly. School anxiety is also expressed in the constant feeling of the little person's own inadequacy, in his uncertainty about the correctness of his decisions and behavior. Such a child constantly feels his own inferiority.
But in general, anxiety in these years arises from the interaction of the individual with life issues. This is a specific condition that is characteristic of a number of situations,emerging in the school educational environment.
Mobilizing and disorganizing influence
Psychologists note that the emergence of a sense of anxiety in schoolchildren is inevitable. After all, knowledge is certainly the discovery of something new. And all the unknown causes a disturbing feeling of uncertainty in a person. If such anxiety is eliminated, then the difficulties of cognition will be leveled. This will lead to a decrease in success in assimilating new knowledge.
That is why it is worth understanding that schooling will become optimal only if the child systematically experiences and worries about what is happening within the walls of the educational institution. However, such a feeling must be at a certain level. If the intensity of the experience exceeds the so-called critical point, which is individual for each person, then it will begin to have not a mobilizing, but a disorganizing effect.
Risk factors
The following features are characteristic of the school educational environment:
- a physical space, distinguished by its aesthetic features, providing opportunities for the movement of the child;
- human relations, which are expressed by the scheme "student - teacher - administration and parents";
- tutorial.
The first of these three signs is considered the minimum risk factor influencing the formation of anxiety in students. The design in which the school room is made is the smalleststress element. However, studies show that in some cases, the backlash is due to the design of the educational institution.
Anxiety in school-age children most of all appears because of educational programs. They act as those socio-psychological factors that have the maximum impact on the development of this negative feeling.
Formation and further consolidation of the level of school anxiety contribute:
- training overload;
- Inadequate parental expectations;
- child's inability to master the curriculum;
- unfavorable relationship with teachers;
- constant repetition of evaluation and examination situations;
- change of the children's team or rejection of the child by peers.
Let's take a closer look at these risk factors.
Training overload
Numerous studies have proven the fact that after six weeks of classes, children (primarily younger students and teenagers) are not able to maintain their performance at the same level. That is why they have some anxiety. In order to restore the state that is necessary for the continuation of educational activities, it will be necessary to give children at least one week of vacation. This rule is ignored in three out of four academic quarters. And only relatively recently, additional holidays began to be done for first-graders. They can rest in the middle of the longest third quarter.
Besides this, overloads occur andbecause of the workload of the child with school affairs, which accompanies him throughout the school week. The most optimal days for normal performance are Tuesday and Wednesday. The effectiveness of the student's studies has been declining sharply since Thursday. In order to fully relax and restore their strength, the child needs at least one day off a week. On this day, he should not need to do homework and other school duties. Psychologists have found that those students who receive homework for the weekend have a higher level of anxiety compared to their peers.
The length of the lesson makes its negative contribution to the occurrence of learning overloads. Observations of researchers convincingly prove the fact that the child in the first 30 minutes of classes is much less distracted than in the last 15 minutes. In the same period, there is an increase in the level of school anxiety.
Difficulty in learning the school curriculum
The student cannot cope with the amount of material offered by the teacher for various reasons. The most common ones are:
- increased complexity of the program that does not match the child's developmental level;
- pedagogical incompetence of the teacher and insufficiently developed mental functions of students;
- the presence of chronic failure syndrome, which develops, as a rule, in the lower grades.
Inadequate parental expectations
Most moms and dads are sure that their child will be an excellent student. In this case, if the student's progress begins to limp for one reason or another, he has an intrapersonal conflict. Moreover, the more parents will focus on getting their child the highest results, the more pronounced the child's anxiety will become. However, moms and dads should keep in mind that often an assessment is nothing more than the result of a teacher’s attitude towards his pupil. Sometimes it happens that a student, having made efforts, achieves certain results. However, the teacher, based on the prevailing stereotype, continues to evaluate his knowledge as before, without giving a higher score. Thus, the motivation of the child does not find its reinforcement and gradually disappears.
Bad relationship with teacher
When determining school anxiety, this factor is considered multi-layered. First of all, the style of interaction with children, which in most cases the teacher adheres to, can cause a negative emotional state. In addition to insulting children and physical violence, increased anxiety among schoolchildren occurs when a teacher uses a reasoning-methodical style of teaching a lesson. In this case, equally high demands are placed on both strong and weak students. At the same time, the teacher expresses intolerance for the slightest violations of discipline and is inclined to transfer the discussion of specific mistakes into the mainstream of assessing the child's personality. In these cases, students are afraid to go to the board, and they are afraid of the very possibility of making a mistake during an oral answer.
Formationschool anxiety also occurs when the teacher's requirements for students are too high. After all, most often they do not correspond to the age characteristics that children have. The researchers note that some teachers see school anxiety as a positive characteristic of a child. Teachers believe that such emotionality indicates the student's diligence, his responsibility and interest in learning. At the same time, they try to artificially escalate tension in the classroom, which in fact has only one negative effect.
Sometimes the diagnosis of the level of school anxiety reveals it in cases of a teacher's selective attitude towards a particular child, which is associated with a systematic violation by this student of the requirements of behavior during the lesson. But it should be borne in mind that a teacher who constantly pays negative attention to a child only fixes, strengthens and reinforces undesirable forms of behavior in him.
Permanent evaluation and examination checks
Such uncomfortable situations for a child also have a negative impact on his emotional state. A particularly high level of anxiety is noted in a schoolchild when checking his social status. Such an evaluation situation is characterized by emotional tension due to considerations of prestige, the desire for authority and respect among peers, teachers and parents. In addition, the child always has a desire to receive a high assessment of his knowledge, which would justify the efforts spent on preparing the material.
For some kids stressfulany answer to the teacher's question, including the one that was made from the spot, can become a factor. Researchers attribute this to the increased shyness of such a student and his lack of necessary communication skills. And sometimes the formation of school anxiety contributes to the conflict of self-esteem, when the child strives to become the best and be the smartest.
But in most cases, negative emotions occur in children when writing tests or during exams. The main cause of anxiety in this case is the uncertainty of the results that will take place at the end of the test.
Change of the children's team
This factor leads to a powerful stressful situation. The change of the team makes it necessary to establish new contacts with as yet unfamiliar children. At the same time, the end result of such subjective efforts cannot be determined in advance, since it mainly depends on those students who make up the new class. Consequently, the formation of anxiety contributes to the transfer of the child from one school to another, and sometimes transfer from class to class. If relations with new comrades develop successfully, then this will become one of the most important resources of motivation for attending school.
Anxious children
How to identify restless students? To do this is not so simple. After all, aggressive and hyperactive children are always in sight, and these children try not to show their problems to other people. Nevertheless, the diagnosis of school anxiety is possible with the help of observations.teachers. Children with negative emotions are characterized by excessive anxiety. And sometimes they are not afraid of the coming event. They are afraid of a premonition of something bad. More often than not, they only expect the worst.
Anxious children feel completely helpless. They are afraid of new games and activities that have not been mastered before. Anxious children have high demands on themselves. This is expressed in their self-criticism. But their self-esteem is low. Such schoolchildren believe that they are literally worse than others in everything, that they are the most clumsy, unnecessary and ugly among their peers. That is why the approval and encouragement of adults is so important to them.
Anxious children often have somatic problems in the form of dizziness and pain in the abdomen, cramps in the throat, difficulty in shallow breathing, and so on. When showing negative emotions, they often complain of a lump in the throat, dry mouth, palpitations and weakness in the legs.
Diagnosis of anxiety
For an experienced teacher, it will not be difficult in the first days of meeting children to identify emotionally disadvantaged among them. However, unequivocal conclusions should be made by the teacher only after he observes the child who caused him concern. And you need to do this in different situations, on different days of the week, as well as during changes and training.
For the correct diagnosis of school anxiety, psychologists M. Alvord and P. BakerIt is advised to pay attention to such signs:
- constant anxiety;
- inability or difficulty concentrating;
- muscle tension observed in the neck and face;
- excessive irritability;
- sleep disorder.
It is possible to assume that a child is anxious if at least one of these criteria is present. The main thing is that it constantly manifests itself in the student's behavior.
There are other methods. School anxiety, for example, can be determined using the T. Titarenko and G. Lavrentiev questionnaire. The results of this study will allow one hundred percent accuracy to identify emotionally disadvantaged children.
For teenagers (from 8th to 11th grade) there are methods. School anxiety at this age is detected using a scale developed by O. Kondash. The advantage of this method lies in identifying the root causes of the problem.
There is also the development of a scale of school anxiety Parishioners A. M. Its principle coincides with that which underlies O. Kondash's method. The advantage of these two scales is that they are able to identify a person's anxiety based on the assessment of various situations taken from everyday life. Also, these techniques make it possible to highlight the area of reality that causes negative emotions, and at the same time, they practically do not depend on how schoolchildren are able to recognize their feelings and experiences.
Phillips Questionnaire
Issues of childhood anxiety also worried the British psychotherapist Adam Phillips. ATmid 20th century he conducted more than a dozen observations of children of different ages studying in classroom groups. The result of these works was the development of a diagnosis of the level of school anxiety Phillips.
A theory was put forward by a British psychotherapist. Its main provisions were that in order for a child to have a comprehensively developed personality, it is necessary to diagnose in a timely manner, and then reduce the level of identified anxiety. After all, the state of mind that accompanies a person in case of strong excitement can cause significant damage to self-esteem and have a negative impact on the emotional sphere of a person.
The use of the school anxiety test is of particular relevance for children in the period of primary school age, as well as students in grades 5-8. The fact is that such a child needs to understand and accept, first of all, himself. Only then will he be able to adequately socialize among his peers.
Determining the level of school anxiety using the Phillips method is based on the use of a questionnaire that includes 58 items. For each of them, the child must give an unambiguous answer: “Yes” or “No.”
Based on the results of the diagnosis of Phillips' school anxiety, a conclusion can be drawn about the extent to which negative emotions have taken possession of the child, and also what is the nature of their manifestation. For the last of these two indicators, the test allows you to identify those feelings of the student that are associated with various forms of participation inclass and school life, namely:
- social stress, which is a condition associated with building relationships with peers;
- attitude towards own success;
- fear of speaking at the lesson, which should demonstrate the skills and abilities of the student;
- constant expectation of negative evaluation of others;
- inability to protect against stress, manifested in non-standard reactions to irritating factors;
- unwillingness and inability to build relationships with adults.
How is the level of school anxiety according to Phillips determined? For this, testing is carried out. It is worth remembering that the Phillips school anxiety technique is used to identify problem children in elementary and middle grades. That is, those who are between the ages of 6 and 13. Testing is carried out orally or in writing. Phillips proposes to organize work on the definition of school anxiety both with each child individually and in groups. The main thing at the same time is a clear formulation of the conditions and compliance with the rules for passing the test.
To identify school anxiety according to Phillips, children are given forms that contain questions. For oral diagnostics, they are replaced with leaflets with numbers from 1 to 58.
The teacher should voice some recommendations. So, he invites the children to put down the answers “Yes” or “No” opposite the questions or their numbers. The teacher also warns the children that allwhat they write must be true. There should be no errors or inaccuracies in the Phillips School Anxiety Test. In addition, it is important to warn children that the answer should be given without hesitation. You will need to write what immediately comes to mind.
Based on the results obtained, unambiguous conclusions can be drawn. If they become disappointing, then the child will need to be shown to a qualified specialist.
To correct school anxiety can be used:
- Role-playing games. They will help to demonstrate to children that the teacher is the same person as everyone around. So don't be afraid of him.
- Conversations. The teacher will need to convince the student that if he wants to succeed, then there must be an interest in him.
- Situations of success. Correction of school anxiety in this case is carried out when the child is given a task with which he will definitely cope. These achievements will become known to classmates and relatives, which will allow cultivating self-confidence in the student.
It is recommended for parents to:
- praise your child every day for their progress by sharing them with other family members;
- refuse words that could humiliate the dignity of their child;
- don't demand from the child to apologize for his act, let him better explain why he did it;
- never threaten impossible punishments;
- reduce the number of comments made to the student;
- hug your child more often, because the gentle touch of the parents will allow him to become more confident and begin to trust the world;
- be unanimous and consistent in rewarding and punishing the child;
- avoid competitions and any work that takes speed into account;
- don't compare your child to others;
- demonstrate confidence to the student, which will be a positive example for him;
- trust the child and be honest with him;
- accept your son or daughter as they are.
By reducing anxiety levels, you can achieve the most effective learning. The correction carried out will make it possible to activate perception, attention and memory, as well as the intellectual abilities of the student. At the same time, it is worth taking all the necessary measures to ensure that the level of anxiety never again exceeds the norm. After all, a negative emotional state contributes to the emergence of panic in a child. He begins to fear failure, thus withdrawing from his studies. For this reason, he may even start skipping school.
