How Threats and Stress Affect Learning [PDF]

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How Threats and Stress Affect Learning • Why Common Threats Fail: Threats have long served as the weapon of choice to regulate human behavior. 1. When schools were optional, threats were less relevant.Teachers’ most common threats to students include detention, lowered grades, or loss of school privileges. 2. miserable experience, the bad feelings “contaminate” the student’s overall opinions about 3. the teacher, classroom, and school. Many students don’t respond to lowered grades or a loss of privileges, so those threats can be tenuous. • Stress and Learning: When we feel stressed, our adrenal glands release a peptide called cortisol.This triggers a string of physical reactions including depression of the immune system, tensing of the large muscles, blood-clotting, and increasing blood pressure. Our body responds with cortisol: physical, environmental, academic, or emotional danger. 1. But in school, that kind of response leads to problems. Chronically high cortisol levels lead to the death of brain cells in the hippocampus, which is critical to explicit memory formation 2. Chronic stress also impairs a student’s ability to sort out what’s important and what’s not suggest that thinking and memory are affected under stress; the brain’s short-term memory and ability to form long-term memories are inhibited. Chronic stress makes students more susceptible to illness. 3. Sts depressed immune system at test time (lower levels of an important antibody for fighting infection) More test stress means more sickness, which means poor health and missed classes, which contribute to lower test scores. Social position changes both attitude and behaviors. This evidence suggests the value of varying the leadership in class groups. A stressful physical environment is linked to student failure. Crowded conditions, poor student relationships, and even lighting. school stress causes vision problems. That in turn impairs academic achievement and self-esteem. a stressed child will constrict breathing and change how he or she focuses to adapt to the stress. This pattern hurts learning in the short and long run. ex. switched the lighting in three classrooms at a Vermont elementary school. For the test, half had regular fluorescent bulbs and the other half had bulbs that simulated natural light (full-spectrum lights). The students in the full-spectrum classes missed 65 percent fewer school days from illness. this is why: Apparently the brain reacts to that visualauditory stimulus by raising the cortisol levels in the blood and causing the eyes to blink excessively, both indicators of stress. Using classroom computers or watching videos also may be stressful for the eyes. students are young. Their eyeballs are very soft and can get distorted by the continual near focusing, serotonin levels have been linked to violent and aggressive behaviors. these students suddenly flourish when given roles like a team leader. Studies suggest



that classroom status or social hierarchies can and do change the brain’s chemistry changing roles often to ensure everyone has a chance to lead and follow. A typical school day is filled with expectations and disappointments, projects that don’t work out, scores that are lower than usual, and classmates who don’t act the way predicted. The brain often reacts to these as threats. Provide predictability through school and classroom rituals. Some stress is not necessarily bad for learning. But the rats were not being asked to write a research paper. But all this purposeful stress is for a good reason: Actual combat is both stressful and threatening. •



Threat and Learning The amygdala is at the center of all our fear and threat responses (LeDoux 1996). It focuses our attention and receives immediate direct inputs from the thalamus, sensory cortex, hippocampus,and frontal lobes. Normally, it triggers the release of adrenaline, vasopressin, and cortisol. These immediately change the way we think, feel, and act. Serotonin is the ultimate modulator of our emotions and subsequent behaviors. When serotonin levels fall, violence often rises. Not only can these imbalances trigger impulsive, aggressive behavior, but they also can lead to a lifetime of violence. Those who have come from families of violence, are often the ones for whom it is the most difficult to gain attention. Threats may exist in the student’s home, on the way to school, in the hallways, and in the classroom it could be a rude classmate or an unknowing teacher who threatens a student with humiliation, detention, or embarrassment before peers. Students are less able to understand connections or detect larger levels of organization. This fact has tremendous implications for learning. Learning narrows to the memorization of isolated facts. Learners with lower stress can put together relationships, understand broad underlying theories, and integrate a wider range of material. •



Learned Helplessness Temporary unmotivating state, learned helplessness is a chronic and devastating condition. It’s often overdiagnosed. symptoms in student comments like, “I’m stupid (or unlucky), so why bother?” Students 1. Trauma. The event could be verbal, physical, or psychological. What does not qualify would be a teacher politely telling a student to quiet down or there will be a private discussion after class. What does often qualify is a bully in the hallways, an abusive homelife, or an insensitive teacher who embarrasses or humiliates a student in front of classmates. For example, when there’s a shooting at a school, counseling teams often need to help students who witnessed the trauma. 2. Lack of Control. The student must have had the experience of no control over the traumatic threat and no skills in handling it. 3. Decision. the so called “lack of motivation” in the discouraged learner. The kids at school who seem to be the most able to deal with failure, students who are outgoing and verbal, may in fact, be the ones most unable to deal with it. •



The Biology of Learned Helplessness



Dogs were placed in separate cages. They were given mild shocks through the grid floor, with no chance to escape. After their resignation became chronic, the shock was eliminated on half the cage. The dog was then dragged across to the safe area to let it feel the altered grid and see the light indicating safety. But the dog went right back to the shocked side and curled up in fear again. This is similar to a student who has learned to fail and simply won’t even try. •



The Results of Learned Helplessness Human experience with uncontrollable events disrupts performance at test tasks. Impaired problem solving is only the tip of the iceberg. The emotional responses invoked in the subjects vary from anxiety to anger to depression. Humans who were stimulated to helplessness often became anxious, depressed, and restless, too. Trice (1982) found that exposure to helplessness increased a liking for hostile, as opposed to innocent, humor. your colleagues or students use excessive sarcasm and make hurtful comments to others. Fortunately, specific strategies can reduce stress, eliminate threat, and head off learned helplessness. •



Practical Suggestions Threats from outside of class, threats from other students, and threats from yourself. You have little control on the outside environment, so be sure to establish a start of class transition time for students. It could be interpersonal, such as discussion with a small or large group or a neighbor. Finally, it might be personal, including journal writing, reflection, and creative writing Discuss and use conflict resolution strategies. Follow through and enforce classroom rules. Never tolerate students threatening or hurting one another. Talk about what language is appropriate to use in school. Let students role play acceptable and inappropriate behaviors.