Using teenage anxiety researches in the educational surroundings in the work of academic advisors.

Author(s):

Liudmyla Andruschenko(presenting / submitting)Zhanna Volodchenko(presenting)Svetlana Khlebik

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

05 SES 13 B, Urban Education and Children and Youth at Risk

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-16

10:30-12:00

Room:

JK 27/106,G, 42

Chair:

Ross Deuchar

Contribution

The work of academic advisor will be successful when it is based on pedagogic and psychological studies, when the advisor knows and understands challenges teenagers face. One of such problems is the problem of their anxiety.

At one time or another, everyone has experienced anxiety. The effects of anxiety are great, especially on teenagers and their school achievements. Anxiety can become a factor in classroom motivation too.

This research is determined by the fact that teenagers’ attitude to the world around, adults, friends, classmates, and their behavior are changed during lifetime. And this process, this positive emotional contact and psychological relation comfort is the foundation of a teenager’s psychological health, and it ensures his(her) motivation for learning and self-development. It all depends on whether parents and educators will be able to notice these changes, understand them and change in time their attitude to a teenager.

Anxiety can be both a cause and an effect of school failure – teenagers do poorly because they are anxious, and their poor performance increases their anxiety. Anxiety probably is both a trait and a state.

When teenagers face stressful situations, anxiety may be encouraged. So they may need a good deal of academic advisors’ guidance. The academic advisor should help highly anxious teenagers to cope with this challenge, to ease their fears, to set realistic goals, both short- and long-term, because these individuals often have difficulty making wise choices.

So the problem of teenage anxiety, its rise and display, its effect on teenagers’ relations with the social surroundings is the objective of our research.

Method

Conducting our research we use descriptive studies which include survey results, interview reports, samples of actual classroom dialogue, recordings, and a combination of these methods. The people being studied were 8th, 9th and 10th graders. The results in each age group were noted, analyzed, compared and presented by us. We used “School anxiety test” (Philips, 2007) for our research. The types of anxiety are determined by this method as follows: 0 – general anxiety; I – anxiety of social contacts with persons of the same age; II – anxiety of social contacts with teachers; III – anxiety of test knowledge; IV – anxiety of self-worth; V – anxiety of people’s expectation discrepancy; VI – the low psychological anxiety resistance.

Expected Outcomes

The research results will help academic advisors to cope with specific teenage problems especially with anxiety. They will give academic advisors a new way of thinking about teenage challenges; tools for creating solutions to other problems and for predicting what might work in new situations. The study of teenage anxiety involves both content and process. It will add more new facts to the professional knowledge of academic advisors. Such directions of academic advisors’ work were formulated on the basis of research results: 1) to inform in time the teenager’s parents about the schooling situation , the results of adaptation, or whether the teenager is succeeding or not; 2) to inform about the teenager’s behavior in class; 3) to notice in time the challenges the teenager faces and to address him(her) to a psychologist or a social worker; 4) to plan some education work with the teenager and the grade he(she) belongs to using the research results.

References

1. Kravets, N. (2003). The learning process of children who have difficulties in studies. Psychological-pedagogic practical work, № 12, 7 – 10. (Ukrainian) 2. Ovcharova, R. (1995). Social-pedagogic neglect at children’s age. Moscow: Pedagogic. (Russian) 3. Petrovski, A.,  Yaroshevski, M. (1990). Psychology. Dictionary. (Russian) 4. Verenich, N. (2004). Anxiety peculiarities of teenagers. Psychologist, № 23 – 24 (119 – 120), 41 – 43. (Ukrainian) 5. Woolfolk, Anita. (2001). Educational psychology / Anita E. Woolfolk. – 8th ed.

Author Information

Liudmyla Andruschenko (presenting / submitting)

Nizhyn State University

Department of Social Work

Nizhyn

Zhanna Volodchenko (presenting)

Nizhyn State University, Ukraine

Svetlana Khlebik