Причины школьной тревожности в псевдолонгитюдном исследовании пятиклассников

Abstract

Evaluation of school anxiety is a typical task of a school psychologist, since it is an indicator of some overt or latent processes taking place in a school or a particular class. Psychologists have accumulated significant databases, which makes it possible to study the change in the results of the same tests from year to year. The turning point is the fifth. And the most difficult situation can arise when a child meets new teachers not directly, but online due to the pandemic. All this determined the purpose of the study: to compare the levels of anxiety over 7 years (from 2015 to 2021) in one school among students in grade 5. The School Anxiety Scale (SAS) test by B. N. Phillips (B. N. Phillips 1978) was used. This test is widely used by school psychologists, while experts question its effectiveness. In this case, it is not so much the level of anxiety of children that is important for us, but rather the comparison of the change in the results of applying the same test by the same psychologist in the same school. In this paper, we will not analyze the absolute test results in a particular year, but the change in these results from year to year. The results of 189 fifth-graders in one of the schools in the city of central Russia from 2015 to 2021 were analyzed. An analysis of the results revealed two bursts of anxiety, one of which was due to the transition to distance learning as a result of the pandemic, and the other, more pronounced, was associated with the appearance of bullying when a new student entered the class. The data indicate the importance of assessing anxiety, since the test allows one to accurately predict significant changes in the psychological situation at school.