An Interactionist-Formative Model of Dynamic Intervention for Cognitive Modifiability and Promoting Learning among Anxious Students: Integrating Instruction and Psychotherapy in English Class

Abstract

Learning anxiety is a psychological state which exerts a critical effect on performance of learners. Absence of explicit physical symptoms and lack of an agreed-upon educational approach for diagnosing and removing anxiety motivated the current research to integrate interactionist-formative dynamic intervention with concept of zone of proximal development and present a model for diagnosing and removing anxiety symptoms inside the educational context. In the second phase of the research, a quasi-experimental design is used to examine the efficacy of the model on 6 anxious students. The scores obtained from pre/post tests and follow-up conditions were collected and analyzed through repeated-measures ANOVA. The findings showed that the model had a significant effect on decreasing anxiety scores in post-test and follow-up conditions. This model is an efficient one which diagnoses and removes anxiety symptoms during regular instructing. These findings have implications for English teachers, Educational counselors, psychotherapists and researchers in the field of educational psychology.

Keywords

• educational psychology
• language teaching
• learning anxiety
• zone of proximal development