Anxiety and academic performance of students
INTRODUCTION
Anxiety is one of the major predictors of academic performance. Students with anxiety disorder display a passive attitude in their studies such as lack of interest in learning, poor performance in exams, and on assignments. Anxiety is a negative, prospective emotion that students experience when they are worried about failure (value) and feel only partially certain about their ability to control the outcome (Pekrun, 2007). Despite its assignment as a negative emotion, anxiety is also considered an activating emotion in terms of its impact on student interest and motivation (in contrast, hopelessness is an example of a deactivating emotion). Therefore, although the impact of anxiety is generally negative on average, its outcome varies by individual students based on their interest and motivation levels (Pekrun, 2007).
Researchers revealed that high levels of anxiety influence on the decrease of working memory, distraction, and reasoning in students (Aronen, 2005). Tobias in Ibrahim (1996) has been recognised that anxiety plays significant role in student’s learning and academic performance; moreover anxiety has been known to have both facilitating and debilitating effects on academic achievement. Researchers have been looking at the correlation of anxiety and the effect of academic performance among school students; they found that among high school students with higher level of anxiety have lower academic performance (McCraty, 2007) and greater anxiety would be associated with poorer academic achievement.
Anxiety is a common phenomenon that constitutes a universal cause of poor academic performance among students worldwide. It is a common undisputable fact in human life’s that influence an individual’s accomplishment in numerous situations, an average level of anxiety is useful in sustaining people hardworking and being responsible of what they have to do (Kahan, 2008 & Donnelly, 2009). Anxiety was defined by (Asadullapoor, Fati, & Gharaee, 2010) as feeling that undesirable and unclear like when person predicts a danger situation. Extreme level of anxiety impends individual’s mental and physical health and also has a negative effect on their personal, social, familial, occupational, and educational performance (Zahrakar, 2008). One of the broadest research areas in recent years has been test anxiety and its dimensions. It is a kind of anxiety which turn out especially during examination. Test anxiety has been overwhelmingly identified as a two-factor construct, consisting of the cognitive (often referred to as “worry”) and emotional (or affective) components.
The concept of anxiety
Anxiety is a subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with arousal of the nervous system (Spielberger, 1983). The high level of anxiety causes a person’s normal life being difficult such as interfered activities and social life. Anxiety is one of the wide varieties of emotional and behaviour disorders (Rachel and Chidsey, 2005). Students with anxiety disorder exhibit a passive attitude in their studies such as lack of interest in learning, poor performance in exams, and do poorly on assignments.
The anxiety’s psychological symptoms among students include feeling nervous before a tutorial class, panicking, going blank during a test, feeling helpless while doing assignments, or lack interest in a difficult subject whereas the physiological symptoms include sweaty palms, cold, nervousness, panic, fast pace of breathing, racing heartbeat, or an upset stomach (Ruffins, 2007). The prevalence of anxiety among university students has been acknowledgement by students and educators. However, study anxiety is a real phenomena, the importance of study anxiety is particularly related to the sources of anxiety and how to handle them.
Anxiety and academic performance of students
Several studies have revealed lower student performance associated with higher anxiety (Zusho et al., 2003; Akgun and Ciarrochi, 2010; England et al., 2017); however, students with midlevel anxiety earned the highest exam scores in a statistics course (Keeley et al., 2008). This follows the Yerkes–Dodson law (Yerkes and Dodson, 1908), which shows a bell curve–type relationship between anxiety and performance, with very low and very high anxiety impeding performance, but midrange anxiety heightening performance.
The anxiety perspective and academic performance is adopted from Catastrophe theory which explains about the relationship of anxiety and performance in terms of sport performance. It is important to understand the theory and the influence of anxiety upon performance. Martin in Robb (2005) proposed that cognitive anxiety would have negative correlation with performance and physiological anxiety have curvilinear relationship with performance. The cognitive anxiety is the component that most strongly affects performance (Ingugiro, 1999; Robb, 2005).
According to Fazey and Hardy (1988) cites cognitive anxiety has a positive relationship with performance when physiological arousal is low. Researcher demonstrated that students with higher level of anxiety tend to obtain lower marks in their end-of-semester examination (Hamzah, 2007). Researcher has been conducted to see the correlation of anxiety and the influence of academic achievement, student with high anxiety levels would have lower academic achievement among high school students (McCraty, 2007).
Anxiety can also be related to persistence. England (2017) identified a difference between the average general class anxiety levels of undergraduate students who intended to stay in or leave the biology major, with those intending to leave having higher anxiety. Witt et al. (2014) found that receiver apprehension (students’ fear that they may not be able to understand the presented material) was negatively associated with the intent to persist in students’ respective majors.
In a study on course climate, Barthelemey (2015) found that academic stress was negatively related to persistence (stress has the same physiological reactions as anxiety, but the cause of the reaction is considered more specifically identifiable. However, stress and anxiety are very closely related).
Effects of anxiety on Social Studies students
Social Studies students have a responsibility to maintain their optimal academic performance. These students with social anxiety may: feel self-conscious and anxious in social or performance-based situations where they are observed by others, such as speaking in front of the class, raising their hand to answer a question, or eating in the presence of peers. Avoid school or participating in class. Anxiety among students are created by insensible teaching or an over demanding syllabus.
This then pushes students towards the surface approach as a coping strategy, stress and anxiety due to personal or family related problems also leads to a feeling of anxiety (Mayya et al., 2004). It is common for students to perform poorly when they experience pressure with their tasks and when they experience high level of anxiety during their studies. There are many sources of created anxiety during study, according to Guerrero (1990) anxiety sources can be interpreted on difference age level, social class, high activity, greater familiarity, gender, and culture ecosystem.
Under certain circumstances, actually anxiety can help us to evaluate and mobilize resources in order to improve performance in some tasks.
Therefore, study anxiety should be taken seriously. This relationship also could possibly lead to reaction of anxiety that interferes with students’ performance through blocks of memory, concentration, attention resources, or cognitive interference from the worries and fears induced by anxiety during their study
Just as anxiety can differ by individual, anxiety also differs among demographic subsets of students in academic environments.
The most widely studied differences have been between females and males, with females having consistently higher anxiety then males (Misra and McKean, 2000; Bayram and Bilgel, 2008; Bryant, 2013).This effect is hypothesized to be mediated by increased anxiety among these students.
Anxiety is a common phenomenon that constitutes a universal cause of poor academic performance among students worldwide. It is a kind of self preoccupation which is manifested as self minimization and results in negative cognitive evaluation, lack of concentration, unfavorable physiological reactions and academic failure. Test anxiety and its dimensions became one of the broadest research areas in recent years.
Constraints of Social Studies towards solving examination anxiety in Nigerian tertiary institutions
Social studies as a discipline is a promising discipline that is geared towards solving Nigerian’s problems that ranges from political, economical, religious as well as educational problems, it is a discipline that revolves around the existence of man, how man can cope and live happily in his environment. It is a discipline that encompasses any phenomenon that can foster the solution to man’s problems. It is unfortunate to note that social studies is explicitly not a perfect discipline, it has some constraints and lapses.
There are obviously some constraints that foil the pace of social studies efforts towards solving examination anxiety in Nigerian tertiary institutions. Gerry and Una (2008) posited the following as the challenges constraining educational efforts to solving educational problems of which examination anxiety is inclusive; and they include: The incessant syllabus change The observable time challenge The educational turnover challenge The educational cross-curriculum challenge The community challenge These challenges pose a significant constraint towards the effort of social studies in solving the problem of examination anxiety in Nigerian tertiary institutions
Conclusion
In conclusion, several cross-sectional studies have found that a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with indices of reduced educational achievement, including lower self-reported grades, lower objective examination results, and difficulty completing assignments. Students with high level of anxiety have a reduced memory span; lose concentration, and lack confidence, and poor reasoning power.
The element can be described as anger and regret in engineering students when feel anxiety in difficult situations related with their study.
Also, it is also demonstrated that students with higher level of anxiety tend to obtain lower marks in their end-of semester examination. Anxiety while studying is a major predictor of academic performance (McCraty, 2007). And various studies have demonstrated that it has a detrimental effect.