The relationship between teacher classroom behavior and student school anxiety levels

Abstract

University of A r i z mCurrent trends in anxiety research have centered on the development of scales designed to measure this phenomenon with reference to the specific situations in which it occurs. Of particular interest to the educator are attempts to measure anxiety connected with the school setting. In this regard, a recent study by Schelkun and Dunn (1967) found a substantial negative correlation (T = -.47) between student school anxiety (SSA) and achievement test scores. These investigators employed the 105-item School Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) which was developed by Bergan (1968) and Dunn (1968) to measure five situationally defined types of SSA: test anxiety, report card anxiety, recitation anxiety, failure anxiety, and success anxiety. There is evidence that one of these types of SSA is amenable to conditioning procedures (e.g. Mann, 1969; Suinn, in press). Mann (1969) reduced test anxiety and correspondingly raised achievement test scores in children as a result of variants of Wolpe's (1958) systematic desensitization technique which is predicated on the conditioning principle of reciprocal inhibition. Since the school anxiety response has been shown to be a conditionable behavior which has the propensity to inhibit academic performance, it was selected to be the dependent variable for this investigation.The variable of teacher classroom behavior has been the subject of much scientific study in recent years. Flanders (1960) developed a ten-category quantitative model to analyze teacher-student verbal behavior with some degree of reliability. This model, termed Interaction Analysis (IA), has made the study of the effects of various patterns of teacher behavior possible. With respect to this model, there is some evidence that certain patterns of teacher behavior which Hough (1967) characterized as rewarding tended to facilitate student achievement and attitudinal development (Flanders, 1964). Similarly teacher behavior characterized as punishing has been shown to inhibit student achievement (Soar, 1967).The conclusion drawn from the above research is that since teacher behavior exerts reinforcement effects upon student behavior, and since the '(anxiety" response can be manipulated according to conditioning principles, that the net level of teacher reward would correlate inversely with classroom levels of SSA. METHOD SubjectsThe teacher was the sampling unit for this study. Three male and fourteen female teacher volunteers, drawn from three elementary schools in Tucson, Arizona, served as Ss. Teachers ranged from two to thirty-two years in classroom experience and were all assigned to grades three through six. The classes were, predominantly, middle socioeconomic level and were heterogeneously-grouped in ability. The SSA results are based on the 443 children taught by the teachers studied. ProcedureEight classroom observers were instructed in the use of Flanders' model and achieved an interobserver Scott (1955) reliability coefficient of .83 during the training. Periodic reliability checks, IT& investi...

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