The Relationship between Calm Concentration Training Model and Reduced Test-Anxiety and Improved Academic Test Scores in Students: A Quasi-Experimental Design

By Cassandra Huff

This essential research capsuled in an easy, simplified, applied methodology, within an easy-to-read book style, is shared by the author-researcher in hopes that those struggling with academic achievement issues will develop an innate desire to use the application herein outlined and thereby improve to academic achievement requirements, as well as individual academic and positive-constructive, wholesome, achievement desires.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640820197

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The Relationship Between Calm Concentration Training Model And Reduced Test-Anxiety And Improved Academic Test Scores In Students

A Quasi-Experimental Design

Cassandra Huff, DD, PhD

Academic Researcher

Dissertation Research

Capella University

Copyright © 2017 Cassandra Huff

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-64082-018-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64082-019-7 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

There is evidence that test-anxiety has an adverse impact on students’ focus and concentration, resulting in lower test scores (DeLapp and Driscoll 2007; Gray 2011; Kesici, Erfogan, Kelesoglu 2011; Miller, Morton, Davis, and Driscoll 2006). Several researchers found that mindfulness-based stress reduction strategies help improve concentration and focus and reduce test-anxiety (Driscoll 2003; Goldberg 2005; Schure, J. Christopher, and S. Christopher 2008; and Weiss, Nordlie, and Siegel 2005). Therefore, a mindfulness-based intervention designed to reduce fear of taking tests might help these students achieve better test scores. Concentration and focus are common issues in preadolescence as evidenced by the work of Blakemore and Choudhury (2006), A. L. Edmunds and G. A. Edmunds (2005), Heaven (1996a and 1996b), Palgi (2007), B. J. Sadock and V. A. Sadock (2003), and Wilgosh (2002).

Because test-anxiety limits concentration and focus, which limits adolescents from performing up to their potential, the researcher proposes a model (calm concentration) to train female students, ages 12 and 13, to focus and concentrate. Calm concentration is a model that trains the mind of students to focus on test performance, thereby helping students reduce test-anxiety and improve test scores (DeLapp and Driscoll 2007; Driscoll 2003; Malik 2008; Miller et al. 2006). This research will provide a training model designed to reduce test-anxiety and help adolescents improve test scores.

Mindfulness [is the] Treasure links calmness and clarity to focus ability; thereby, permits openness to produce positive and more improved desired results. 

Dr. CASSANDRA HUFF, DD, PhD

Chapter 1

Introduction

Introduction to the Problem

Low test performance has been known to stem from stress, such as fear of test taking, commonly referred to as test anxiety. Test anxiety can impede focus and concentration, causing some students to produce low test performance and, for a number students, a continual cycle of performing below academic achievement standards. Consequently, helping students improve overcome anxiety in turn can help them improve test performance (Miller, Morton, Driscoll, and Davis 2007; Tobias 2008). To this extent, helping children learn strategies to improve desired outcomes is a concern that educators, counselors, therapists, clinical and developmental psychologists, and social workers continue to address in practice and nonpractice settings.

Educators, counselors, therapists, clinical and developmental psychologists, and social workers are constantly driven to utilize counseling-therapy strategies that are designed to help their students and clients overcome problems that hinder positive outcomes (Heaven 1996). In addition, Heaven (1996) suggested an examination of interventional treatment strategies that are designed for use by the developing adolescent. In this examination, the overall concern becomes, should educational arenas include techniques to improve academic achievement outcomes, using techniques that have astonishing success rates in helping people produce more desirable and acceptable outcomes across activities of life.

Research indicates that educators, counselors, therapists, clinical and developmental psychologists, and social workers provide curriculum-based intervention strategies to ameliorate causes of low test performance and situations that impede academic achievement in school-age children (their clientele). Where achievement is hindered because of fears, such as test anxiety, the eventual outcome more than likely would be below standard academic performance. Researchers, such as Hollenstein and Lewis (2006) and Kesici, Erdogan, and Kelesoglu (2011), have found that anxiety places stress on students and, as such, can contribute to unacceptable academic (test) performance. Furthering those findings, researchers have found that anxiety also contributes to deflated esteem in adolescence, which can contribute to impaired focus and concentration (Weiss, Nordlie, and Siegel 2005).

Categorically, practitioners employing alternative arts, such as mind-body relaxation strategies (in this study, chiefly referred to as calm concentration, a mindful intervention strategy), in the intervention process, have found that children who learn mindful technique interventions such as calm concentration develop strategies that help them improve their present coping strategies (Bennett-Pasquale 2009; Chan, Chan, and Ng 2006; Goldberg 2005; Malik 2008; Miller, Morton, Driscoll, and Davis 2007; National Youth Agency 2009; Palgi 2007; Price 2009; Schure, Christopher, and Christopher 2008; Weiss et al., 2005). In addition, practitioners (for the purposes of this study, educators are included in this category) employing mind-body relaxation strategies, which are scientifically accounted for as mindfulness practice strategies (strategies that help a person relax his or her body and mind so that he or she is better able to maintain the desired concentration and focus) can help school-age children, mediate stressors, and make improvements in areas such as academic (test) performance (Bennett-Pasquale 2009; Chan, Chan, and Ng 2006; Driscoll 2003; Goldberg 2005; Malik 2008; National Youth Agency 2009; Palgi 2007; Price 2009; Schure, J. Christopher, and Christopher 2008; Weiss, Nordlie, and Siegel, 2005). To this extent, in this study, the intervention strategy is a mindfulness stress-reduction practice that has helped students reduce test anxiety and improve academic test scores.

Background, Context, and Theoretical Framework for the Problem

Background

Anxiety is a stressful event and, as such, can have adverse effects on academic (test) performance in school-age children. According to Driscoll (2003); Goldberg (2005); Schure, J. Christopher, and Christopher (2008); and Weiss, Nordlie, and Siegel (2005), stress reduction strategies help improve concentration and focus, and reduce (test) anxiety. Weiner (1974, 1979, 1985, and 2012) and Driscoll (2004) found that anxiety because of fear can explain the difficulties in students’ low academic achievement performance. Further, several studies indicated that undesirable academic outcomes have been known to stem from fear-induced anxiety (Blakemore and Choudhury 2006; A. L. Edmunds and G. A. Edmunds 2005; Heaven 1996a and 1996; Palgi 2007; B. J. Sadock and V. A. Sadock 2003; Wilgosh 2002). Additional studies concurring that academic test-performance issues arise because of anxiety-induced fear are Weiss et al. (2005); DeLapp and Driscoll (2007); Gray (2011); Kesici, Erfogan, Kelesoglu (2011); Miller, Morton, Davis, and Driscoll (2006). Thus, fear of taking tests influences test performance in students, resulting in low test scores.

Moreover, fears stemming from an inability to adjust to school curricular activities (such as freezing or cognitive withdrawal at time of tests) can cause students great distress. More important, the inability to achieve desired academic outcomes can stem from experiencing distress, such as test anxiety, during the preadolescent developmental phase and is a more intense influence characteristic of fear that impedes potential test performance (DeLapp and Driscoll 2007; Driscoll 2004; Miller, Morton, Davis, and Driscoll 2006). Therefore, test anxiety is a factor that may contribute to low test performance, resulting in low test scores in school-age female students.

The study proposes to demonstrate that mindfulness relaxation strategies, such as calm concentration, can help female students who are experiencing anxiety (such as fear of taking tests) improve low test performance and reduce anxiety. Studies conducted by Bennett-Pasquale (2009); Chan, Chan, and Ng (2006); Goldberg (2005); Malik (2008); Miller, Morton, Davis, and Driscoll (2007); National Youth Agency (2009); Palgi (2007); Price (2009); Schure, J. Christopher, and Christopher (2008); and Weiss, Nordlie, and Siegel (2005) indicated that mind-body relaxation strategies, which are scientifically accounted for as mindfulness practices, help a person relax his or her body and mind so that he or she is better able to maintain the desired concentration and focus. Thus, the assumption is that the calm concentration training model can help students improve academic test performance.

Context

Brief overview. There are children who produce low test results because of an anxiety known as test anxiety, which describes fear of taking tests in students. Surely, these students would like to learn strategies so they too can excel in academic achievement. There are strategies known to help students reach acceptable academic achievement outcomes. Training them in strategies that can help them improve test performance and reduce anxiety becomes important to helping them reach potential test performance, resulting in improved test scores.

Key components. Mindfulness practices are relaxation strategies that have helped numerous students improve focus and concentration, resulting in achieved positive academic-related outcomes (Chan, Chang, and Ng 2006). Thus, school-age students experiencing test anxiety can be trained to improve focus and concentration so that they optimize their ability to focus and concentrate on the task at hand, resulting in improved test performance and ultimately improved test scores.

Origination of problem. Studies indicated lack of test-taking skills prevent students from maintaining sustained focus and concentration, which can be the cause of students’ inability to achieve acceptable achievement-test outcomes. This event can preclude students from optimizing potential test performance; thus, maximizing their ability to perform on tests is greatly inhibited. Anxiety (such as test anxiety) can be a factor that contributes to (pre)adolescent school-related adjustment issues, resulting in poor academic test outcomes (Bennett-Pasquale 2009; Chan, Chan, and Ng 2006; Goldberg 2005; Malik 2008; Miller, Morton, Davis, and Driscoll 2007; National Youth Agency 2009; Palgi 2007; Price 2009: Schure, J. Christopher, and Christopher, 2008; and Weiss, Nordlie, and Siegel, 2005).

The assumption is that previously learned material can be sufficiently recalled when answering test questions, even if a student is experiencing anxiety stress. This achievement can take place if students learn mind-body relaxation strategies. More important, there are mind-body relaxation strategies that are designed to help students maintain concentration and focus while taking tests and while performing other academic activities so that they are able to recall previously learned material and thereby produce acceptable achievement (test) outcomes.

Supporting successful use of mindful-based interventions, which is a mind-body relaxation strategy known as yoga, Bennett-Pasquale (2009) found that children who perform poorly in school activities have been able to perform acceptably after learning mindful-based intervention strategies. Furthermore, Bennett-Pasquale (2009) stresses the importance of using strategies that can help children achieve positive outcomes in school activities. More important, these kinds of studies offer future hope for declining educational systems.

Supporting anxiety onto academic (test) achievement results, Kesici, Erdogan, and Kelesoglu (2011) found that students who have esteem issues tend to have higher levels of fear (anxiety) when it comes to performing in math. Esteem as a behavior, then, is assumed to be relevant to academic achievement, thus corroborating the findings of researchers who state that children who perform poorly in school activities do so because of underlying stressors. Moreover, these underlying stressors are related to preadolescent and adolescent adjustment and developmental issues, and because of environments that sometime insufficiently support the needs of developing preadolescents and adolescents (Heaven 1996; Kesici, Erdogan, and Kelesoglu 2011).

Overall, this study is concerned with reducing the effects of test anxiety so that amidst family life, children will rely upon learned strengths—the mastery of mind-body relaxation interventions—to help them produce acceptable academic achievement outcomes. Examining mindful-based strategies that help reduce stress and strengthen cognitive abilities in students who can benefit from alternate learning strategies is important. This proposed study shares a mindful-based strategy (Driscoll 2003), of which in this proposed study is better accounted for as calm concentration, a relaxation strategy that can help students remain with sufficient concentration and focus so that they are able to produce desired academic (test) outcomes.

Introduction to theoretical frame. Children are taught that behavioral responsibility is placed upon them in environments such as school. As such, training them to circumvent emotional imbalances and introducing skills that can help them mediate the cause of unacceptable resultant behaviors are important (Heider’s attribution theory; see Kelley 1967). Because mediating the cause of behaviors that result from anxiety is very important to students’ learning how to circumvent situational circumstances that may exacerbate anxieties, such as test anxiety (i.e., fear of taking tests), intervening with strategies that have been known to help reduce anxiety is crucial to the developing (pre)adolescent. Consequently, stress of this nature has detrimental effects in students during the (pre)adolescent development phase, and as this population develops throughout their primary educational years, broadening academic interventions that help those students who are (test) anxiety sufferers maximize test performance is crucial.

Theoretical Framework for the Problem

Attribution Theory

Because achievement outcomes are influenced by behaviors, it is important that students learn skills to help them achieve acceptable outcomes. The research problem proves that calm concentration helps improve students’ test performance. Attribution theory supports the research problem because it provides a framework for understanding behaviors by identifying and analyzing psychological or cognitive events affecting an individual (Rehen, Allen,