Anxiety disorders keep rising among students as the day goes by. Anxiety has a way of interrupting with students’ performance especially when it comes to research project writing. Individuals in high anxiety levels tend to experience poor academic performance throughout their years in the university. Anxiety has demonstrated to have detrimental effect both on the health and academic performance of students.
For a teacher, being able to interact with the student and display positive behavior such as asking questions, understanding their thoughts, showing interest and appreciation increases the students’ motivation and success. While working towards providing students at a certain development level information, experience and behavior on a certain topic, teachers become role models for students by way of their own behavior and attitude. Positive attitudes lead to success while negative attitudes lead to failure and as a result success can lead to positive ego attitudes while failure leads to negative ego attitudes. For example, if the teacher engages in belittling comments towards a student due to his/her failure, the negative effects of this will be inevitable.
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Teaching is much more than saying and explaining. One of the most basic principles of teaching abilities is supporting of the student by the teacher and for the teacher to put for their positive expectations in order to motivate the student to learn. While the positive behavior of the teacher allows him/her to create a positive relationship with students, it also allows for the teacher to delve on the positive behavior of students as opposed to the negative, taking on a reinforcing role as well.
High level of anxiety also interferes with concentration and memory, which are critical for academic success. However, most of students would lack the concentration of study because of exam anxiety, social anxiety, mathematic anxiety, and many anxiety sources. Feeling discomfort and anxious in the classroom does not enhance learning of any kind. The anxiety’s psychological symptoms among students include feeling nervous before a study class, panicking, going blank during a test, feeling helpless while doing assignments, or lack of interest of subjects difficult whereas the physiological symptoms include sweaty palms, racing heartbeat, or an upset stomach.
Anxiety is a psychological and physical response to treat a self-concept characterized by subjective, consciously perceived feelings of tension. Anxious students have experience of cognitive deficits like misapprehension of information or blocking of memory and recall. Study anxiety is not only due to the lack of study motivation or to insufficient skills, but is also due to misperception about courses and negative experiences in previous study classes. High level anxiety is more closely associated with lowered performance in low-ability students than in high-ability counterparts. At the global level, anxiety is viewed as a permanent trait, as some people are predisposed to be anxious.
TEACHERS ATTITUDE
Attitude is defined as a complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings. Attitude can also be seen as the tendency to react in a certain way towards a designed class of stimuli. Attitude has also been defined as a mental and neutral state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related. People’s attitudes towards their profession have an effect on their performance.
Attitude is very important when you are a teacher. It affects your students in many ways and can shape their learning experience. As a teacher, you will sometimes experience stress that carries with you all the way home. Rather than dwelling on this, find positive ways to eliminate your stress.
ANXIETY
Anxiety is a basic human emotion consisting of fear and uncertainty that typically appears when an individual perceives an event as being a threat to the ego or self esteem. Anxiety is defined as an emotional state consisting of feeling, tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry with activation or arousal of the autonomic nervous system, these are differentiated as state and trait anxiety. Individuals with high levels of anxiety generally hold heightened levels of trait anxiety, but in evaluative situations, the state anxiety also elevates.
Anxiety is also an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure. People with anxiety disorders usually have recurring intrusive thoughts or concerns. They may avoid certain situations out of worry.
Anxiety is a mental health disorder characterized by feelings of worry, anxiety or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one's daily activities. Examples of anxiety disorders include panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Symptoms include stress that's out of proportion to the impact of the event, inability to set aside a worry and restlessness.
Treatment includes counseling or medication, including antidepressants.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Academic performance is the measurement of student achievement across various academic subjects. Teachers and education officials typically measure achievement using classroom performance, graduation rates and results from standardized tests.
Academic performance of students is a key feature in education. It is considered to be the centre around which the whole education system revolves. Academic performance of students determines the success or failure of any academic institution. Academic performance of students has a direct impact on the socio-economic development of a country. Similarly, students’ academic performance serves as bedrock for knowledge acquisition and the development of skills. Additionally, the top most priority of all educators is academic performance of students. Academic performance is the knowledge gained which is assessed by marks by a teacher and/or educational goals set by students and teachers to be achieved over a specific period of time. These goals are however, measured by using continuous assessment or examinations results.
EFFECT OF TEACHERS ATTITUDE ON ANXIETY LEVEL OF STUDENT
Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue and problems in concentration. Everyone has feelings of anxiety at some point in their life, whether it is about preparing for a job interview, meeting a partner’s family for the first time, or the prospect of parenthood. While we associate anxiety with alterations to our mental state, experienced as worry or apprehension perhaps, and physical symptoms such as raised heart rate and adrenaline, we also understand that it is likely to affect us only temporarily until the source of our anxiety has passed or we have learnt to cope with it. Anxiety is therefore one of a range of emotions that serves the positive function of alerting us to things we might need to worry about: things that are potentially harmful. More importantly, these emotions help us to evaluate potential threats and respond to them in an appropriate way, perhaps by quickening our reflexes or focusing our attention.
A teacher who realizes that the nature of knowledge and abilities directly affects his/her students and surroundings takes responsibility for his/her own knowledge and abilities, creates positive relationships with his/her students and can relay these to students in the most efficient manner. In this whole process, the effect of the teacher in the personality development and success of students is a fact that cannot be overlooked. The teacher, through either positive or negative attitude in communication with students and in how he/she reflects this, directs the shape of their lives, has a positive or negative effect on the attitude shown toward themselves or the public in general, affecting development of the ability to communicate, research and be creative. The behavior and approach of the teacher is directly accepted and copied by students, which puts great responsibilities on the teachers.
Therefore, when students have a feel of anxiety especially when writing research project, they tend to lose their confidence because of fear of what and how the project will turn out and most of this cases are seen where undergraduate students have strict and unsupportive project supervisor. So the fear of not wanting to disappoint their supervisors or the fear of whether they can write an excellent project that will be accepted without much criticism bothers them which eventually turn into anxiety. And when students begin to feel this way, there is every tendency that they lose their self confidence which may lead to poor research project.
CONCLUSION
As expected, the anxiety in the educational environment is generated by the teachers’ attitude. The perceived threatening attitudes are generating frustration and very high anxiety. The educational anxiety is a result of the cognitive capacity and the requirements, all this strongly marked by the teachers attitude. This attitude gives the student the feeling of being backward and ineffective which amplifies the anxiety and also creates the premises for depression.
Fear is probably the most basic of all emotions. Not only do all humans experience it, but fear responses have been found in all species even animals right down to the sea slug. Experiences of fear vary tremendously in their severity, from mild anxiety to extreme terror and panic. The experience of fear can also vary in duration from a brief, almost fleeting flash, to a constant, all day experience. While anxiety and panic, by their nature, are unpleasant, they are not in the least bit dangerous.
Anxiety is manifest by disturbances of mood, thinking, behavior, and physiological activity and accompanying disturbances of sleep, concentration, social and/or occupational functioning. Also, it is associated with restlessness, feeling keyed up or on edge, being easily fatigued, difficulty in concentrating or mind going blank, irritability, muscle tension, and irritability. And all of these can make one lose his/her self confidence in anything which may or may not turn out excellently well.
It can be concluded that Childs’ anxiety disorders may affect success at school and they are very often correlated with teachers and parents attitudes.