The Intricate Problems and Solutions in the Educational System

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Introduction

The course readings explore the intricate problems and solutions in the educational system. The final exam covers stress in school environments and research questions based on the reading. The concepts learned regarding stress include the causes of academic stress, the effects of stress on students, the coping mechanisms, factors that affect teachers’ burnout and stress, and implications of early life stress. The study objective is to identify the teaching method which has the most significant impact on student development. In addition, the paper will analyze ways learning institutions can positively impact the student transition from lower to upper school and ways to identify mental health needs among the students.

Causes of Stress

Stress is an unavoidable aspect of life that, if not properly managed, can negatively impact students’ physical health and academic progress. Changes in lifestyle, increased workload, new obligations, and interpersonal connections can cause stress among students. Academic performance is the most common cause of student stress. Learners face high competition to emerge top in exams; thus, there is a need for proper stress management. The class requirements are daunting due to the increased workload and assignments. Teachers require students to complete assignments and course readings and prepare for exams. In addition, instructors require students to write research papers and participate in outdoor activities to earn a grade.

All these activities combined to create a stressful environment for the students. Students who have poor time management skills are the most affected due to the increased pressure of procrastination. Teachers assign assignments to students throughout elementary, middle, and high school. The academic standards placed on schools and teachers thus contribute to students’ stress levels as they often overschedule students’ time for learning. The unnecessary high expectations placed on students create higher stress scenarios as the students compete to become the best, thus losing social skills. External school issues, such as family, also lead to student stress. This includes situations such as divorce, death, and family finances which affect students psychologically. Family presents a difficult challenge for teachers as it is beyond their control and thus only offers supportive services.

Effect of Stress on Students

Stress affects students in various ways, including lack of sleep, aggression, lower academic performance, and ineffective time management. People who have stress episodes are more likely to experience poor sleeping habits. Students require at least eight hours of sleep to function at top performance. Poor sleep patterns make stress management more challenging as it negatively impacts concentration, problem-solving, memory retention, and learning ability (Hart et al., 2013). Stress also makes students angrier, particularly those prone to bullying. Stress increases feelings of anger and irritability; thus, students socially withdraw and have outburst episodes.

Stressed students direct their anger at other students and also school instructors. The students resist following school guidelines and limit their engagement with instructors. The focus on anger disrupts their overall behavior, both physical and online. Stress inadvertently affects students’ performance, limiting their ability to focus and impacting memory retention (Jalongo, 2021). Stress leads to lower grades and an increased number of dropouts as students cannot focus on their studies. Stress inflicted by teachers directly increases students’ stress levels in the classroom environment as stressors disrupt learning and concentration. Teachers should recognize the significant effects of stress on students and create a supportive educational environment.

Educators should conduct regular check-ins with students and avail mental health programs to enable them to succeed academically. Students experiencing stress are disorganized and uncertain of their objectives. This leads to ineffective time management, thus affecting overall student performance. The students procrastinate assignments and deadlines, thus affecting their quality of academic work. The students are focused on the negative situations and therefore constantly reflect on the issues rather than completing assignments. The lower academic performance leads to reduced confidence levels, hindering them from succeeding in school.

Coping Mechanisms

There are three major stress coping mechanisms: problem-focused, emotional-focused, and avoidance-focused coping strategies. The problem-focused coping strategy entails removing the stressor by dealing with the root cause of the issue. This strategy offers a long-term solution as it practically targets the stressors, thus reducing the stress levels (Zeidner & Matthews, 2018). The problem-focused approach works when the student can control the source of stress, such as exams, by planning for the final exams.

Emotion-focused coping reduces the negative psychological responses associated with stress. The strategy does not offer a long-term solution as it deals with emotions, not the source of stress. This option is only used when the stressor is beyond a student’s control. Examples of emotion-focused coping strategies include seeking peer emotional support after a bad performance on an exam. Avoidance coping entails employing strategies designed to avoid a stressful situation. Students should believe in themselves to minimize the negative impact of stress. Teachers should provide a wide range of resources to help students stay mentally and physically healthy to achieve academic success. Schools should offer counseling to support students experiencing stress and mental challenges.

There should be a central place for group counseling and workshops that provide coping strategies, peer support, and stress management techniques. Teachers can refer students to counselors in extreme cases such as the death of a family member. It is critical to creating awareness at the beginning of each period rather than waiting to reach out to students during exams. Promoting healthy stress management and self-care helps students be better prepared to handle stressful times like final exams. It is prudent to incorporate social activities such as outdoor events to enhance students’ mental health by relieving social stress factors.

Factors that Affect Teachers’ Burnout and Stress

The teaching profession is one of the most stressful professions as tutors work in a demanding environment. The work environment is defined by three critical factors, work support, relationships with colleagues and students, and curriculum change policies. Work support entails providing teachers with autonomy to structure their lessons and teaching methods. Support from all relevant authorities creates a conducive working environment that reduces stress (Shen., 2015). Teachers’ autonomy stems from deciding what to teach, monitoring student progress, and deciding how to teach without deep administrative oversight (Collie, Perry, & Martin, 2017). Teacher’s working in a controlling environment as prone to having stress. Teachers’ relationship with colleagues and students significantly influences their mental health. The sources of teacher’s stress include unmotivated students, students who lack discipline, students’ hostility towards a tutor, breaking school rules, and destroying school property. School characteristics such as students’ socioeconomic status and funding also influence teachers’ relationships with students. Teachers spend most of their time with students and thus are isolated during work. Therefore, teacher-student relationships are central to determining experiences of stress and wellbeing.

Teachers may feel overwhelmed by the student populations as they deem themselves ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of diverse student groups. Teachers are challenged to meet the needs of students with disabilities as there are more reported cases in these circumstances. Another factor that elevates teachers’ stress is curriculum policies, including standardized testing material. Standardized testing assesses student achievement and measures teacher and school effectiveness. However, the tests impact teachers’ stress as they may be used to determine job tenure (Hoglund, Klingle, & Hosan, 2015). The standardized tests affect teachers due to the pressure to raise test scores and the consequence of low performance among students.

Implications of Early Life Stress

Students in the contemporary world are more stressed due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pressures of sustained online teaching offered by different institutions and tutors, getting top grades, balancing extracurricular activities with studying, and spending time with family add to the student’s stress. In addition, students manage other identities in the digital world, such as bullying and gossip. Early life presents a moment of high susceptibility to stress, during which exposure can have long-term consequences for brain structure and function. This stress-induced development conditioning could play a role in adult behavioral alterations. In humans, the experience of early life stress in the form of a lack of social connection is associated with the development of behavioral abnormalities and psychiatric disorders.

Early childhood stress has long-term effects on the brain, such as altering learning and memory. In addition, it leads to impaired adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Stressors experienced in early life change the parts of developing children’s brains responsible for learning, memory, stress, and emotional processing (Hanson et al., 2015). These changes may be tied to negative impacts on behavior and health. Research has found that children who experienced early life stress had smaller amygdalas than children who had not. Children from low socioeconomic status households and children who had been deprived of social life have smaller hippocampal volumes, thus impacting their emotional intelligence.

Research Question One

The study objective is to identify the teaching method which has the greatest impact on student development. The research aims to discover the approach with the most significant impact on student development. Pedagogy is how we approach curriculum regarding what children should learn and how they learn the content. Various pedagogical approaches aim to support students through their learning journey to achieve the maximum outcome. Constructivism pedagogy entails a teaching style where children are active learners. The teaching method includes experiences and reflection based on the student’s learning objectives. Social constructivism refers to learning as a collaborative process.

The theory focuses on children and instructors collaborating to achieve the best outcome through group work. The teacher is the sole authority in charge of all learning practices in behavioral pedagogy. The theory focuses on direct instruction, where each subject is taught separately. Modern pedagogy entails online learning where students find and apply knowledge from online platforms. The approach that has the greatest impact on children’s development is analyzed using the characteristics of highly successful learning criteria.

A qualitative research method was used to compare characteristics of successful teaching methods and the analyzed pedagogies. A viable learning technique features entail consultation with students regarding school matters. This involves conversations about learning, seeking alternative teaching methods from students, and collaborating to solve issues that affect students’ learning process. In addition, a successful teaching technique should consider issues of progression and outcome between short-term and long-term educational goals (Durden-Myers, 2021). An effective method provides a means for considering learning views and reinforcing ideas. In addition, the teaching technique considers prior learning since the method tackles misconceptions established at an early age. An effective teaching method is inclusive and considers students’ diverse needs, such as socioeconomic factors.

Research Question Two

Transitions from early years to school are central to children’s development and emotional wellbeing. The technique used in the transitions has a significant impact on the child’s ability to cope with change in the short and long term. The research will analyze ways learning institutions can positively impact the student transition from lower to upper school. The research should focus on challenges and gaps faced by children during the transition period and their solutions.

A qualitative research method was implemented using focus group discussions with key education stakeholders, including education officials, parents, teachers, and child care workers. The students were sampled based on relevant features of the transition from early childhood to formal education. The most prominent challenge is the lack of resources, particularly in disadvantaged backgrounds (van Rens et al., 2018). The lack of resources resulted in anxiety and withdrawal; thus, students failed to transition. Stakeholders should identify students from less privileged backgrounds and provide financial support to enable children to transition to formal education.

Research Question Three

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic left many students with negative mental effects. The research question entails determining the prevalence of mental health issues among the students. The school setting may be an excellent place to spot early indicators of mental health issues. The onset of most mental health disorders symptoms occurs during early life at the start of adolescence. Adolescents are typically involved school-going students between elementary and high school. Therefore, the school environment offers a conducive space for teachers to identify students showing signs of mental health illness.

Identifying mental health needs among students in early grades entails five approaches. Universal screening entails assessing mental health using standardized questionnaires and selecting students with an increased risk for mental health for screening (Soneson & Ford, 2020). There is a need for a student curriculum to incorporate identification criteria regarding mental health disorders. Training students and staff to identify symptoms of mental health disorders can help in early detection. The behaviors include aggression, difficult temperament, and behavior impulsivity. There is a need for further research on the results of these strategies. However, teachers and peers are at a greater advantage in identifying mental health challenges as observations are daily.

Conclusion

The study objective is to identify the teaching method which has the greatest impact on student development. In addition, the paper will analyze ways learning institutions can positively impact the student transition from lower to upper school and ways to identify mental health needs among the students. Students experience stress related to changes in lifestyle, increased workload, new responsibilities, and interpersonal relationships. Stress affects students in various ways, including lack of sleep, aggression, lower academic performance, and ineffective time management. There are three significant stress coping mechanisms: problem-focused, emotional-focused, and avoidance-focused coping strategies. The experience of early life stress in the form of a lack of social connection is associated with the development of behavioral abnormalities and psychiatric disorders.

References

Collie, R. J., Perry, N. E., & Martin, A. J. (2017). School context and educational system factors impacting educator stress. In educator stress (pp. 3-22). Springer, Cham.

Durden-Myers, L. (2021). What Makes Great Pedagogy? PE Scholar. Web.

Hanson, J. L., Nacewicz, B. M., Sutterer, M. J., Cayo, A. A., Schaefer, S. M., Rudolph, K. D.,… & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Behavioral problems after early life stress: Contributions of the hippocampus and amygdala. Biological psychiatry, 77(4), 314-323.

Hart, S. L., Hodgkinson, S. C., Belcher, H. M., Hyman, C., & Cooley-Strickland, M. (2013). Somatic symptoms, peer and school stress, and family and community violence exposure among urban elementary school children. Journal of behavioral medicine, 36(5), 454-465.

Hoglund, W. L., Klingle, K. E., & Hosan, N. E. (2015). Classroom risks and resources: Teacher burnout, classroom quality and children’s adjustment in high needs elementary schools. Journal of School Psychology, 53(5), 337-357.

Jalongo, M. R. (2021). The effects of COVID-19 on early childhood education and care: Research and resources for children, families, teachers, and teacher educators. Early Childhood Education Journal, 49(5), 763-774.

Shen, B., McCaughtry, N., Martin, J., Garn, A., Kulik, N., & Fahlman, M. (2015). The relationship between teacher burnout and student motivation. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(4), 519-532.

Soneson, E., & Ford, T. (2020). Identifying mental health difficulties in children & young people: The role of schools. ACAMH. Web.

van Rens, M., Haelermans, C., Groot, W., & Maassen van den Brink, H. (2018). Facilitating a successful transition to secondary school:(how) does it work? A systematic literature review. Adolescent Research Review, 3(1), 43-56.

Zeidner, M., & Matthews, G. (2018). Grace under pressure in educational contexts: emotional intelligence, stress, and coping. In emotional intelligence in education (pp. 83-110). Springer, Cham.

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