"I'm not a good test taker." "I can't do math." "I have no trouble with writing papers, but taking tests is hard."
Students
who think that they have trouble with tests or with math are usually
correct. These students can be very difficult for teachers to work with
because they do well in most areas of school, but have trouble on tests.
In addition, these students are usually girls. Is there some reason
that girls have more trouble with tests and with math? Research shows
that girls can do math at the same level as boys can so what is going
on?
The reaction to stress is usually known as fight-or-flight.
Individuals who are faced with stress or danger respond by sending
blood, oxygen, and sugar to the muscles and brain so that they are ready
to take on the oncoming problem or rapidly get out of the way. This
response has been understood for many years and the assumption has been
that all people react this way (Lee & Harley, 2012).
In 2000,
Taylor and others published a paper which proposed that many women do
not react to stress with the traditional fight-or-flight response. She
suggested that many women react in a way she named tend-and-befriend
(Taylor et al., 2000). In this condition, the individual does not
prepare to fight or flee, but to stand one's ground and defend those
around her. In this response, blood travels to the center of the body
and the individual finds it difficult to move or think. During this
response, the person can freeze, finds it difficult to make rapid
decisions, and needs to talk or be with close friends.
So what does
this have to do with academic anxiety? I believe that when children are
placed in a testing situation or are dealing with material which they
find challenging, boys react with fight-or-flight and many girls (but
not all) react with tend-and-befriend. The result for boys is that their
handwriting can become messier, they can become physically active, and
they may overreact to the situation, but they can think. Girls, on the
other hand, may find it difficult to retrieve information, have trouble
making decisions, and may become very quiet.
Helping girls by
pointing out that their reaction is normal – not helpful, but normal –
is the first step. They can learn to control their reaction through
exercise and breathing control, but the first step is to understand that
it is not the test or the math that is causing their problem. It is
their reaction to stress and learning to manage stress will help them in
everything that they do.
Lee, J., & Harley, V. R. (2012). The
male fight-flight response: A result of SRY regulation of
catecholamines? Bioessays, 34, 454-457.
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L. C.,
Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J.
A. (2000). Biobehavioral responses to stress in females:
Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight. Psychological Review, 107(3),
411-429.