FAQ

Anxiety is the most common of the many emotions that students experience during their school day. While a certain amount of anxiety is normal before exams, test anxiety can prevent students from reaching their potential. Test anxiety manifests itself on the one hand through worry, i.e. frequently thinking about a poor result or the consequences of failure. Such negative thoughts consume memory capacity, which is consequently no longer available for completing the tasks and impairs performance. Students with test anxiety also feel helpless, stressed and insecure as well as experiencing physical symptoms such as palpitations, trembling or nausea. The uncomfortable thoughts and feelings can lead to students avoiding exam situations and exhibiting avoidance behavior even while studying.

References:

Ashcraft, M. H., & Kirk, E. P. (2001). The relationships among working memory, math anxiety, and performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 130(2), 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1037//0096-3445.130.2.224

Frenzel, A. C., Götz, T., & Pekrun, R. (2020). Emotionen. In E. Wild & J. Möller, Pädagogische Psychologie (S. 211-234). Berlin: Springer.

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., & Perry, R. P. (2002). Academic emotions in students' self-regulated learning and achievement: A program of qualitative and quantitative research. Educational Psychologist, 37(2), 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3702_4

Conflicts arise when at least one of the parties involved in a social situation perceives a conflict of interests or a threat to their own goals. They are usually perceived as a threat and then often initially ignored, trivialized or covered up. Such reactions to an existing conflict can lead to its escalation and worsen the social climate in the classroom.

It is advisable to approach a conflict situation proactively and focus on the chances of improvement through a joint solution to the conflict to avoid negative consequences for the teacher-student relationship or the relationships between the students. Regardless of whether the teacher is involved in the conflict, the process of joint conflict resolution should focus on safeguarding the interests of all parties to the conflict without working towards “lazy compromises”.

The constructive conflict resolution according to Thomas Gordon provides a framework for finding a joint solution to the conflict. This involves several steps in which the parties to the conflict define the problem, collect and evaluate proposed solutions, decide on a solution and finally evaluate the success of this solution.

Our training program (SOKO-L) also encourages joint conflict resolution with the help of Gordon's constructive conflict resolution. A detailed description of the individual steps can be found in the training materials.