Psychological wellness is often divided into its parts, separating emotional wellness from that of intellectual wellness, for example. It’s hard to argue against the impact of emotions on intellectual vigor. Perhaps the most obvious linkage is that of anxiety and how this negative emotion can affect learning.
Who hasn’t sweated through a difficult exam? We all get anxious when we’re challenged to offer what we know. Whether at work. Or, at school.
Let’s consider the school scenario and higher education specifically.
Students are anxious about school. They are anxious about achievement. Test anxiety is a scourge in education. Old school mentality was that students should accept the hardship. Disability accommodations met the other end of the pendulum.
The literature suggests that students can be divided into high anxiety and low anxiety types that respond to pressure and stress differently. The low anxiety type revels in an atmosphere that is challenging that is likely to result in difficulties and even failures.
Instructors gravitate to the low anxiety types. They come to class with bigger smiles. They engage quicker, the first to raise their hands and offer their opinions and knowledge. Eager to determine if they’re right or wrong. When wrong, the instructor ‘sees’ the learning occurring. That little failure helped them navigate the concept and get a better understanding of the subject matter.
How a person ends up being in the high anxiety type – well that’s a pretty deep psychological and biological question. This is probably a good time to throw in the definition of anxiety.
The word anxiety refers to a feeling of worry about an imminent event. It appears to be on the emotional spectrum with fear that is thought to involve the amygdala. The mind rapidly brings up the many contingencies associated with a future event. The whole IF, THEN world, in which all animals exist, has reached this massive abstract capability in humans. We humans evolved into beings that can envision contingencies that extend to the limits of our imagination.
The high anxiety types come to dread certain situations, since the only envisioned contingencies brewing in the sub-conscious are negative. In this post, let’s explore how to create an environment that allows for high anxiety individuals to be better learners.
Instructors gravitate away from high anxiety types. It’s natural. They are quiet, contribute less to class discussion. Absences, both physically and mentally, are more common. They dread being exposed: as the not-knowers. Their perspectives on failures, big and small, are self-defeating.
So, picture yourself taking an exam, you come across a question that is completely baffling. This can easily evoke an anxious moment in the student. It’s like, if I can’t get this one, I’m probably not going to get the rest, then I get a bad grade, future schooling, job opportunities, economic uncertainties – before you know the ‘attention train’ has left the station.
During one of my teaching stints, I recall my mentor telling me that the first page of the exam (paper back then, so about 5-6 questions) need to be simple and easy. He said that it sets up the student for success. Intuitively, it totally makes sense. So, for high anxiety types, who dread failure of any kind, success breeds success. Page one is done, I can do this.
Random ordering of questions is contrary to this goal, which is to encourage success. Start with easy questions and end with hard ones.
So, the fear of failure and the incapacitating worry of the consequences of that failure need to be tamed. Organized education needs to recognize this and foster opportunities for trial and error, with an emphasis on error. Student success only follows student failure, when placed in the proper context.
Instructors are encouraged to create environments where failure is an ordinary part of the activity. Games such as Flashcard contests do an amazing job at creating such an environment. Divided into groups, give the students an incentive to succeed (dare I say extra credit points), but no negative consequences for failure.
Learners that wish to build their self-efficacy can build a massive stack of Flashcards, testing themselves over time. By keeping a log on daily performance, learners get encouraged to see that with practice improvement is overt and self-evident. Building a new contingency.
References
The Meaning of Anxiety by Rollo May, Ph.D.
Mandler & Sarason (1952) A study of anxiety and learning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 47: 166
Robinson, Vytal, Cornwell, Grillon (2013) The impact of anxiety upon cognition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7: 203