Helping Middle School Students Acknowledge and Navigate Anxiety: An Action Research

Teachers and school counselors have the responsibility not only to build a positive school climate in which students want to perform and stretch themselves academically and socially, but also to create an environment in which students know that their teachers and school counselors are aware of their needs, anxiety, and other factors preventing them from reaching their potential. In the present study, we used an action research design to help students acknowledge their anxiety and know how to navigate it. The results indicate that most students exhibited lower anxiety before and during the test, while their anxiety level was the highest after taking a test. Moreover, the power analysis (p-value) shows that students’ anxiety levels before, during, and after a test did not did not significantly impact each other. Challenges regarding anxiety interventions include: 1) students who used fidgets as toys rather than sensory tools, 2) teachers reluctant to implement coping skills continuously for fear of losing instructional time, and 3) the school’s limited funding for purchasing a wider variety of coping strategies. Suggestions to school administrators and future research studies are discussed.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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