Does Stress Impact School Students’ Learning Performance?

DOES STRESS IMPACT SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LEARNING PERFORMANCE? Abid Hussain Shahzada, kaleem Ur Rehmanb, Muhammad Saqibc abcThe Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan Corresponding Email: abid.hussain@iub.edu.pk Abstract Most students face stress throughout their education, especially during the exam. Academic work, in addition to other factors, depends on the school environment, teacher behavior and family support. The current study is important because it has studied the impact of stress on students' performance. The study aimed at investigating the influence of stress on student’s performance. The study was created in high schools located in the Vehari district of Punjab, Pakistan. The sample consisted of 10 secondary schools in Vehari district. The choice of secondary schools (5 male schools and 5 female schools) was followed by a simple random sampling method. A survey was conducted to find out the impact of stress on student performance. Three independent educational psychology experts have approved the instrument. Using the statistical package, the researcher analyzed the data obtained. The study recommends that: (i) teachers should be able to provide instruction using good teaching methods to reduce stress; (ii) teachers should not force students to take private lessons from them; (iii) the teacher can provide appropriate exams with a view to reducing student stress; iv) parents and family members can participate in reducing student stress; (v) parents must provide all the study materials necessary for regular attendance and regular attendance by students for parents, and (vi) parents can encourage their children to work effectively to reduce stress. Keywords: Stress, Academic Performance, Secondary Schools, Educational Psychology 1. Introduction Page 38 Stress can manifest itself in various ways in a person's daily life. Stress is explained as cognitive and physical response of the body to respond unfamiliar situations. To regulate life, we tilt ourselves as per the new situations. Stress often causes anxiety and that can be related to play school, money-related problems, health problems or the departing of near and dear ones. Such phenomena are linked with anxiety and stress factors. An abrupt unwanted change in the course of life always results in anxiety. The influence of apprehension results in low-level self-efficacy, beliefs and intrinsic motivation. There is always a possibility that the individual considers the prospect to tolerate decisively as a factor of the life testing and find variety of ways to keep pace with the changing phenomena (Franken, 1994). Stress is the way an organism responds to a mild type of demand. Good and bad stressors can be produced. When people feel good or bad indicate something's happening around them, their body reacts with emancipating substances into the bloodstream. These substances provide students additional vigor and resources that can be either beneficial or stressful. If stress is the answer to somewhat expressive and that there are no paths for this additional strength and energy, it would unveil various causes of anxiety (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). Asia Pacific Institute of Advanced Research (APIAR) Commonly, stress refers to both the psychological pressure perception on one side, and the body's response to it, on the other, involving multiple systems, from decomposition to the muscles and memory. Stress is the response of mental action through hormonal signaling, perception of danger triggers an automatic response, known as the fight or escape, that prepares all the animals to face a challenge or to escape from it. Stress is a great expectation of oneself. Stress is the feeling of tension and pressure. Stress is a threatening sensation (Cohen et al., 1997). Stress can mention students who are in physiological, physical or mental problems. So, it is harmful to the students. It should arise if a stress student event is discouraged, sincerely and physically. It should arise if an event of stressful students is compared with a different physical well-being (Quick et al., 1997). Stress is a remote or internal figure that causes exercise stress to be annoying. If anxiety is making the environment positive, students gain more results in every field of training. Students work harder and strive to achieve a stress-free environment; then achieve impressive results in their teaching work and increase their efforts towards others and towards oneself (Humphrey et al., 2000). The researcher defines stress because adverse reactions have extreme anxiety or varying types of locus of control. Stress increases normally when encountered by a situation that seems overwhelming and unsustainable. Academic stress among students has been studied for a long time and her study has identified stress as too many jobs, competition with other students, bankruptcy, lack of taxes, poor relationships with other students or teachers, family or home problems. Academic stress among students has been studied for a long time and their study has identified many factors that create stress as many projects that compete with other students. Many stress factors influence students' creative thinking and also influence their career. Stress is a barrier to student success. A more powerful aspect of stress is failures and bad relationships with other students or teachers. Academic stress includes the student's awareness of compulsory disinformation and the awareness of insufficient growth time (Carveth et al, 1996). Mckean et al. (2000) maintain that mindsets of disturbance, nervousness and downheartedness are amongst the possible effects of an extreme level of anxiety. Stress factors individually do not contribute in frustration and tension. Conversely, the collaboration amongst stress factors and the persons’ individualized environment contribute towards the attainment of a higher level of stress, frustration and downheartedness. His study referred to this position as a treatment of competition theory and suggested that very concerned people tend to demonstrate less intellectually less effective. In addition, these authors have studied whether the stress experienced is related to specific specialized surgical interventions or more generally for treatment. The student's participation is both physical and psychological. Students' stress reduction approach often includes effective hourly organization, social support, positive re-evaluation, and an appointment to seek freedom (Fairbrother & Warn, 2003). 2. Objectives of the Study After the literature review, we put forward the following objectives of study: To examine the types of stress that is linked with the student academic excellence. To get an in-depth understanding of stress factors related to student academic excellence. Page 39 3. Research Methodology This study was delimited to the Public Secondary School of the district Vehari. In this study, when dealing with secondary school student, from this population, the researcher hadtaken a sample of 10 secondary schools from each tehsil of district Vehari. The researcher was further divided 10 secondary schools into two group 5 males and 5 female’s secondary schools. The Asia Pacific Institute of Advanced Research (APIAR) researcher was taken 15 students from each secondary school selected as sample. The researcher was used simple random sampling technique for data collection. 3.1 Data Analysis Data was analyzed by applying statistical formula mean parentage and mean score and on thebasis finding were made. 3.2 Results The following tables show the descriptive results with the individual items in the research instrument. Table. 1 Study polishes my personal abilities Choices F p Strongly Disagree 2 .4 Disagree 2 .4 Undecided 1 .2 Agree 208 46.2 Strongly Agree 237 52.7 Total 450 100.0 Mean 4.50 Table 1 reflects that 52.7% respondents strongly agreed that the study polish my personal abilities, 46.2% respondents agreed, 0.4% respondents strongly disagreed, 0.4% respondents disagreed and 0.2% respondents undecided in their response While mean score value is 4.50. So, the majority of the students respond that the study polishes their personal abilities. Table. 2. My daily habit of doing homework enables me to do better in examinations Choices F p Strongly Disagree 1 .2 Disagree 2 .4 Undecided 0 0 Agree 188 41.8 Strongly Agree 259 57.6 Total 450 100.0 Mean Page 40 4.56 Table 2 shows that 57.6% respondents strongly agreed that my daily habit of doing homework enables one to do better in examinations, 41.8% respondents agreed, 0.4% respondents disagreed and 0.2% respondents strongly disagreed in their response While mean score value is 4.56. So, the majority of the students respond that their habit of daily homework enables them to do better in examinations Asia Pacific Institute of Advanced Research (APIAR) Table. 3 My daily habit of doing homework enables me to do better in examinations Choices F p Strongly Disagree 1 .2 Disagree 2 .4 Undecided 0 0 Agree 188 41.8 Strongly Agree 259 57.6 Total 450 100.0 Mean 4.56 Table 3 shows that 57.6% respondents strongly agreed that my daily habit of doing homework enable to do better in examinations, 41.8% respondents agreed, 0.4% respondents disagreed and 0.2% respondents strongly disagreed in their response While mean score value is 4.56. So, the majority of the students respond that their habit of daily homework enables them to do better in examinations. Table. 4 I feel that my family members don't understand my emotions Choices F p Strongly Disagree 1 .2 Disagree 2 .4 Undecided 1 .2 Agree 203 45.1 Strongly Agree 243 54.0 Total 450 100.0 Mean 4.52 Table 4 demonstrates that 54% 0f respondents strongly agreed that I feel that my family members don’t understand my emotions, 45.1% respondents agreed, 0.4% respondents disagreed, 0.2% respondents strongly disagreed and 0.2% respondents are undecided in their response While mean score value is 4.52. So, the majority of the students respond that they feel that their family members don’t understand their emotions. 70% students agreed that the gape in communication between teacher and head teacher affectstheir learning.2% are uncertain while 28% are disagreed that communication gap effect on their learning Page 41 60% respondents agreed that the class teachers often fail to clarify the objectives of the lesson during class teaching. 4% are uncertain while 36% disagree that teachers often fail to clarify the objective in the class. Asia Pacific Institute of Advanced Research (APIAR) 55% respondents agreed that their teachers show their socio-economic status that effect on their learning. 6% are uncertain while 30% disagree that teachers show their socio-economic status that effect on their learning. 90% respondents agreed that they have no opportunity to meet teachers in free time for learning purpose and 10% respondents disagree with the statement. 85% respondents agreed that their parents provided them all educational material on time. While 5% are undecided and 10% respondents disagree with the statement. 47% respondents agreed that their classroom environment is not very pleasant, 10% are uncertain while 43% have opinion that classroom environment is pleasant in the schools. 4. Discussions, Conclusion and Recommendations Page 42 The current research was considered to identify the influence of stress on student’s academic performance at secondary school level, as the stress is the biggest price of success. Male and female students do not differ significantly in their academic stress scores. The results of the current study are in contrast with the study done by Chiu, S. I. (2014) in Taiwan’s perspective revealing that stress has a negative relationship with academic performance and students learning self-efficacy of the current study reflect the reduced stress factors that affect students’ academic performance in secondary schools the concerned body has to work on the issue seriously. The teachers should provide good teaching methodologies and enhance the learning skill in students. The teachers do not force to the student for tuition. The teacher provides proper guidelines about exams and tests. Parent and family have impacted role in student academic performance. Parents should provide all the needs of the school and also take check and balance of their children’s. Parents attend parents’ meeting regularly. Parents encourage their children to dohomework. In schools, the qualified, experienced, skilled teachers are the main input to guarantee the quality of education. However, teachers’ competency, parent involvement in school, class size and school facilities were one of the challenges in schools to head even teaching learning process. To conclude, the current study’s focus to investigate the linkage between academic stress and students performance and hence proved a positive relationship at secondary school level. The study recommend for the policy makers, curriculum developers, schools teachers, and parents to provide a stress free environment to the young student for the better academic excellence and the development of cognitive domain that is necessary for achievement s and scholarships. Asia Pacific Institute of Advanced Research (APIAR) Page 43 References i. Ashcraft,M.H.,2002. Math anxiety: Personal, educational,and cognitive consequences. Current directions in psychological science, 11(5), pp. 181-185. ii. Bandura, A., 2001. 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