Towards a definition of anxiety in learning situations

Abstract

Emotions are a complex reality that involve changes not only on a physical level, but also in the mood, in the way of thinking, in attitudes and in moti-vational states. Anxiety is an emotional condition that every human being experiences in life, it is a universal experience widespread in both children and adults. It can be found in all cultures and in most cases has a transitory character. Epidemiological studies indicate that this phenomenon is widespread in Italy, tends to develop easily among young people and is also found in childhood. According to research, in fact, about 20 out of 100 chil-dren would manifest forms of anxiety.
Attention to affective reactions is fundamental in the school environment, as emotions, in particular anxiety, can be of help or, on the contrary, an ob-stacle in the action of study and learning.
The learning process takes into account several factors: cognitive, metacog-nitive, affective and motivational. For this it is essential that the student knows the various learning strategies and learns to manage emotions in order to know how they manifest themselves and understand what the causes may be. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to understand how to help adolescents manage and regulate anxiety in learning situations. Among the assessment tools, the Questionario sulle Strategie di Apprendi-mento (QSA), by the scholar Michele Pellerey, is suitable for making a first screening and allows you to identify the possible relationships between anx-iety and other factors such as emotional interference, difficulty concentrat-ing, the lack of perseverance or self-regulation which could contribute to raising the level of anxiety. This diagnostic tool is useful in a school and train-ing context, as it allows to give a lot of information that can be taken into consideration by the student, the individual teacher and the class council to set up a profitable training action and, if necessary, recovery and support program.