By Easing Anxiety for Lower-Income Students With 10-Minute Writing Exercise, Test Grades Soar Dramatically

Thor wrote:This fascinating new study shows that easing the anxieties of lower-income high school freshman can cut their test failure rate by half.

The study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that brief pre-exam de-stressing strategies could reduce the performance gap often seen between lower-income and higher income students.

“It’s not just about what you know in a particular moment, but your perceptions of the situation, your worries also matter. Your anxiety can affect how you demonstrate what you know when it matters most,” says Barnard College President Sian Leah Beilock, a nationally recognized cognitive scientist who studies the pressures children face in school and led this week’s study.

“We were particularly interested in whether we could help improve test scores in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], an area where a broader representation of students is needed.

Job opportunities in STEM fields are expanding, but students from lower-income families are often ill-prepared for them. Much of the discrepancy begins in high school, where they don’t take as many STEM classes as other students, in part because they perform poorly in them. One factor may be that they’re not expected to perform well, which creates performance anxiety. The researchers hoped to address some of the downstream psychological consequences of this anxiety, freeing students’ minds to unleash their potential.

“This study shows that students’ grades are not just about what they know,” said Christopher Rozek, lead author on the study and a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. “Students’ emotions factor into how well they do in their classes, and schools should continue to prioritize students’ emotional well-being in order to help students perform up to their potential.”
Close to 1,200 freshmen at a large high school in the Midwest took part in the study. They each completed emotion-regulation exercises before their mid-year and final biology exams. Those randomly assigned to the “expressive writing” intervention were asked to spend ten minutes writing about and openly exploring their feelings about the test. Beilock and other researchers have previously shown that writing about one’s anxieties paradoxically reduces their burden, making them feel more manageable and freeing cognitive resources for the task at hand.


https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/easing-anxieties-with-ten-minute-writing-exercises-reduces-high-school-freshman-failure-rates/



More to read on the link

Maddog wrote:

Thor wrote:This fascinating new study shows that easing the anxieties of lower-income high school freshman can cut their test failure rate by half.

The study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that brief pre-exam de-stressing strategies could reduce the performance gap often seen between lower-income and higher income students.

“It’s not just about what you know in a particular moment, but your perceptions of the situation, your worries also matter. Your anxiety can affect how you demonstrate what you know when it matters most,” says Barnard College President Sian Leah Beilock, a nationally recognized cognitive scientist who studies the pressures children face in school and led this week’s study.

“We were particularly interested in whether we could help improve test scores in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], an area where a broader representation of students is needed.

Job opportunities in STEM fields are expanding, but students from lower-income families are often ill-prepared for them. Much of the discrepancy begins in high school, where they don’t take as many STEM classes as other students, in part because they perform poorly in them. One factor may be that they’re not expected to perform well, which creates performance anxiety. The researchers hoped to address some of the downstream psychological consequences of this anxiety, freeing students’ minds to unleash their potential.

“This study shows that students’ grades are not just about what they know,” said Christopher Rozek, lead author on the study and a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. “Students’ emotions factor into how well they do in their classes, and schools should continue to prioritize students’ emotional well-being in order to help students perform up to their potential.”
Close to 1,200 freshmen at a large high school in the Midwest took part in the study. They each completed emotion-regulation exercises before their mid-year and final biology exams. Those randomly assigned to the “expressive writing” intervention were asked to spend ten minutes writing about and openly exploring their feelings about the test. Beilock and other researchers have previously shown that writing about one’s anxieties paradoxically reduces their burden, making them feel more manageable and freeing cognitive resources for the task at hand.


https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/easing-anxieties-with-ten-minute-writing-exercises-reduces-high-school-freshman-failure-rates/



More to read on the link

There is a small industry over here that is devoted to teaching kids how to take tests and raise their scores.

https://www.petersons.com/

This is one of many.

Thor wrote:

Maddog wrote:

There is a small industry over here that is devoted to teaching kids how to take tests and raise their scores.

https://www.petersons.com/

This is one of many.

Very interesting Maddog

I think its good people are looking to help others who clearly struggle, espcially with mental health issues.

Have a thanks