Directions on Prevention of School Anxiety of Junior Schoolchildren: the Today’s Realities and the Prospects of the «New Ukrainian School» (Based on the Example of the Longitudinal Study)

Abstract

The results of the first stage of the longitudinal study on the influence of external factors on the formation of anxiety and fears of junior schoolchildren are presented in the article. External factors include: a new social development situation that plunges a child into a new strictly normalized world of relationships, requires organized arbitrariness, appropriate discipline, development of executive actions related to the skills of educational activities; teacher’s evaluation, excessive level of parental appeals, public discussion of child’s achievements. The definition of anxiety as a feeling of an uncertain threat and a vague perception of danger is given. The main manifestations of anxiety and types of fears of junior schoolchildren are listed: dissatisfaction with their achievements; orientation to external evaluation; the inability to evaluate their activities independently; increased sensitivity to social comparisons; groundless feeling of failure, etc. The spatial fears, the regime ones, and the fears of assessment are described. Training and educational conditions of a child’s being at a regular school and at the new Ukrainian school (NUS) where attention is paid to the formation of secure comfortable external conditions which should reduce the level of anxiety among junior pupils are compared. The external conditions of NUS are highlighted: the formation of competencies, the cooperation with a child, new relations with parents, the alteration of the evaluation methods. The results of statistical data of the longitudinal study of anxiety and fears of junior schoolchildren in the context of a three-year period are highlighted. The dynamics of the anxiety of pupils of other classes in the process of maturing is presented. Statistical indicators of correlation and factor analysis of data are highlighted and analyzed. Multi-level models of school anxiety determination of junior schoolchildren are constructed which are based on the factor analysis of data. The analysis of multiple informational indicators of the largest factor loads in the sample of pupils during the three-year longitudinal study was performed.

Keywords

• anxiety
• fears
• junior schoolchildren
• determinants
• longitudinal study
• new Ukrainian school.