Typological Scale of Learning Anxiety: Eliminating Obstacles in Higher Education

Abstract

During life, people are exposed to situations that can trigger different anxiogenic responses, this research focuses particularly on the experiences of university students. Anxiety in learning points to cognitive imbalance when faced with new data. Although it can be evaluated according to the level: mild to severe, in this work we aim at categorization as a type of psychopedagogical basis in dialogue with M. Klein. Anxiety can be signaling, confusional, paranoid and depressive. The signaling reveals the internal imbalance, and the person who learns can rebalance, accommodating and assimilating the information and transforming it into knowledge. The other three types of learning anxiety require awareness aimed at rebalancing learning. When it converts into maladaptive, one position is confusional, characterized by the inability and/or difficulty in distinguishing aspects to be assimilated and accommodated between the new and the already established data. The other is paranoid, which is manifested by the feeling of destruction that accompanies new data. The third is depressive marked by the feeling of loss and insecurity in the face of what is unknown. When the typology of learning anxiety is identified, the ability to develop and cope with learning difficulties increases, promoting mental health.

1. Introduction

Learning is present in human behavior and we do it using information that is selected from various sources: From family, social, affective and psychic relationships. When selecting data considered important, we take ownership of its content, reorganizing it to meet our immediate needs or projects that will be developed in the long term. Thus, two dimensions can be identified in which learning is established: Informal and formal.

Informal education is a process that develops outside regular educational spaces, without planning or structure and is related to simple daily human practices [1, 2, 3]. The information that organizes beliefs, values and behaviors is transmitted in daily interpersonal relationships.

Formal education is characterized by taking place in institutionalized spaces, having pre-defined content and consisting of previously demarcated evaluative criteria with attribution of value to succeed or fail, as it contemplates the performance of the subjects involved in the process [1, 2]. It is organized into curricular stages, divided into disciplines, meets rules governed by internal and external laws and classifies access based on age group and level of knowledge.

It is important to highlight that both informal and formal learning maintain a close relationship with each other, with the separation between the two constructs being merely didactic, to discriminate the nature and places in which they occur, in both, anxiety emerges when one is subjected to new situations, events or activities.

If informal learning is characterized by the aspect of free appropriation of what is available in the environment, the same does not happen with formal learning, which has rules that increase anxiety. In this way, it is up to the subject who occupies the position of a learner to identify whether they have the necessary skills to manage it, satisfactorily conducting the stages of the process of assimilating the new content that will be presented.

Throughout life, people are exposed to situations that can trigger different anxiogenic responses, however, in this study’s formulation, the emphasis is on the academic experience of university students.

In the educational field, anxiety in learning points to a cognitive imbalance in the face of new data. Although it can be assessed according to the level: mild-moderate-severe, in this chapter, we aim to categorize it through type supported by psychopedagogical studies conversing with the confusional, paranoid and depressive positions that define the quality of the relationship that the university student establishes with the object of knowledge [4, 5].

2. Learning and anxiety in formal education

In the psychopedagogical proposition, for learning to occur, the articulation between cognitive, affective, social, organic and pedagogical-cultural aspects must occur. Furthermore, the association between these instances also allows for recognizing when difficulties inherent to the act of learning arise, preventing them or promoting interventions when identified [6, 7, 8].

By valuing the individual characteristics of each subject, psychopedagogy interrogates how one learns, with the aim of identifying how the subject understands the act of learning, which elements were selected by him and how he manages cognitive and affective resources, to understand whether he uses them as a facilitating or limiting resources when carrying out the action of learning what is transmitted to him [8, 9].

Learning is inherent to human existence, however, when one chooses to learn something new, it is necessary to adhere to the system of significances in force in each socio-historical period [3, 9]. Inserted in this context permeated by the culture from which is constituted, it constantly (re)organizes. As a result, personal values undergo changes that materialize in observable behaviors arising from the expectations that are placed on the new and unknown elements with which they will come into contact.

In the social sphere, when the child is enrolled in the regular education network (public or private), the formal learning process begins, expanding the relational network that transmits the values that predominate in the segment in which it is inserted. The importance given to the quality of children’s performance at school is the template on which their personal trajectory will be built, toward entry into higher education. During the process, you will experience anxiety and difficulties that arise in anxiogenic events represented by assessments, presentations and testing carried out during the semester/academic year [1, 7].

Considering that learning is associated with anxiety, at this stage, if the child has difficulties with/in learning, medication control for anxious behaviors currently prevails, erroneously, to minimize or eliminate the learner’s unsatisfactory performance in the educational path.

The use of medications in childhood, applied indiscriminately to everyone, transforms attitudinal changes that can be interpreted and managed in education, into pathology. This classification can be considered as a social strategy to deal with children who present behavior, development or learning difficulties outside the social control standards that define hegemonic normality.

Thus, when the child is unable to meet the criteria required of them, they move between anxiogenic positions, and their search for self-regulation and balance is not seen as a healthy process, but rather a pathological one. To resolve the obstacles that anxiety produces, anxiety levels are identified to medicalize, instead of understanding the message that the symptom or inhibition in/of learning communicates or wants to express [7, 10].

By endorsing the production of new knowledge and powers of exclusionary hegemonic control, the place of the hygienist physician in educational institutions is recognized, called upon and authorized to guide professionals who work in schools and higher education institutions. In this situation, medicine is established as a partner of the commitment to educate and care, categorizing anxiety as a disease and the student as a patient, emptying it of its basic principle, which is to signal that there is danger in the relational environment between the student and the object to be known and that this interaction needs to be analyzed and improved.

The experience gained in the first years of the school extends as a reference for higher education when the professional choice is completed. When anxiety is described as an element that limits and makes learning impossible, it will be the pathologizing image that will accompany the learner throughout their school journey. We propose another possibility of psychopedagogical interpretation as a critique of this traditional conception.

The psychopedagogy perspective with which we identify presents a conception of an integral, proactive and systemic subject. It postulates that each person must be seen as a historical-social subject with rights who build their personal and collective identity in the interactions, relationships and daily practices they experience. It consolidates central and peripheral beliefs when it plays, imagines, fantasizes, desires, learns, observes, experiences, narrates, questions and constructs meanings about nature and society, and in the process, produces culture [7, 10, 11].

2.1 Higher education and anxiety in the learning process

Entering college is an experience that marks the personal and social life of the university student whose first challenge is to stay on the course when considering the duration period. In addition to financial planning, students must be concerned with assorting the time available between personal, family and work life, adding space to their routine to carry out the tasks that academic life requires [12, 13, 14, 15]. However, if conflicts begin to occur in any of these areas, the difficulty in managing them will activate anxiety, compromising the processes taking place in them.

If the learner is able to manage the situation, removing the feeling of danger, they will be able to reorganize themselves, rebalancing the learning of new situations and content that will arise. On the other hand, if instability remains, constant and continuous exposure to academic, family, personal and social demands will be linked to each other, intensifying the feeling of danger and defense mechanisms will continue to be active, producing atypical and dysfunctional behavioral conditions enhanced by anxiety [14, 15].

Formal learning requires physical, emotional and psychic investment, and signaling anxiety is part of the learning process, in a quantity of energy that favors balance, referring to the movement of updating between assimilation and accommodation. For this reason, reactions to fear can be experienced, but they are elaborated and managed positively by the student without compromising their permanence in the course, and the quality of intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships [15].

Therefore, approaching the concept of anxiety in learning necessarily involves referring to a set of feelings and emotions experienced by humans when faced with unknown situations or situations that are not part of their routine. Because of this, they are interpreted as danger or imminent threat. In the case of university students, when satisfactorily meeting the demands of the academic environment, and skillfully handling stressors, they will only have to deal with the difficulties inherent to the knowledge they are trying to (re)construct.

However, if this does not happen, the anxiogenic elements will tend to paralyze or limit the construction of knowledge, generating short- and long-term impairment. Among these impairments are: evasion, mental health disorders, low income and impairment of work, family and social activities. Therefore, here lies the challenge of reflecting on anxiety not in its intensity, but in its psychic, energetic organization.

2.2 Teaching and positions in Kleinian theory: identifying anxieties

Kleinian theory postulates that emotional experience is the basis of psychic life, granting meaning to events and what exists and happens in both the conscious and unconscious and does not admit that drives are dissociated from an object. In the construction of reality, the internal world is a space populated by objects and loaded with drives, instincts, functions and relationships. With internal objects, total or partial, the subject lives personal relationships marked by recognition [4, 5, 16].

The internal world of Kleinian psychoanalysis must be understood as space, a dimension that, although related to the functions of the id, the ego and the superego, does not coincide with these psychic instances, but rather surpasses and contains them. In the initial stages of development, the internal world is essentially corporeal, with movements of fusion and syncretism with objects and even with parts of the external world. With development, some difference will be made between one’s own body, internal or external objects, external world, self and non-self, a differentiation that progressively becomes clearer [5, 16].

The positions described in Kleinian theory are a way of experiencing the world related to the set of anxieties, defenses and fantasies predominant at a given moment in life, as a psychic dynamic that is in constant movement, is flexible, alternates throughout life and is updated continuously.

The difficulties identified in learning can be multi-causal, however, when the university student falls short of what is asked of him and is unable to keep up with his classmates, the ego’s defense mechanisms are triggered and resistances are activated and the university student moves between positions in which confusional, paranoid and depressive anxiety predominate [14, 15].

2.3 Typological anxiety scale in university students

The Typological Scale for assessing learning anxiety in university students is made up of 24 items, distributed in 06 blocks with four options in which the student must choose only one of the options. By choosing the options distributed among the 24 items, it is possible to identify the anxiogenic position in which the student finds himself, allowing interventions to be carried out, reconfiguring the affective relationship that the subject establishes with the contents presented in the classroom and with people involved in the process.

2.3.1 Confusional anxiety

Confusional anxiety appears when the learner, in his interaction with the object of knowledge, is unable to discern aspects that support his judgment. Semi-permeability in the binding interaction is compromised because it cannot decide what goes in and what goes out. New information floods your thoughts, but it doesn’t connect with pre-existing information.

In this category, the learner cannot be clear about their possibilities and limitations, they become confused and insecure, and wait for someone to tell them what to do and how to proceed. Confusional anxiety is related to the fear face to indiscrimination between the subject and object of knowledge. There is, therefore, a loss of distance between the two.

The learner becomes unstructured in the face of new learning, as he is unable to differentiate his potential and his limitations. It is difficult for those who learn to establish positive and negative values to what is being taught, which makes them confused, insecure and dependent on the assessment of others. In the face of new learning, imbalance predominates, which causes discomfort, because of the feeling of confusion that arises [16, 17].

Therefore, indiscrimination due to the loss of pre-existing discrimination and the difficulty in perceiving positive or negative valences can result in dependent behavior in relation to learning [16]. Confusional anxiety is experienced by everyone when faced with novelty, however, it also sustains a dependent link with learning situations. Therefore, whenever faced with something unknown, the student waits for someone to clarify, take the lead and solve the problem, as if it were an extension of the subject [18, 19].

Theoretically, these behaviors are interpreted as confusional anxiety due to the approximation of the conceptualization of the glyscrocaric position, the most primitive stage of human development [20], and the paranoid-schizoid position presented in Kleinian theory. What characterizes these positions are primitive defenses, dissociation and projection. Symbiosis considered in this perspective as the inability to discriminate and differentiate the parts of the object, presents agglutination as a solution, the perception of a single whole. Symbiosis is used by the self as a psychic mechanism to deal with the subject’s inability to bear separation from the object [16, 19].

The learner perceives the new learning as beyond his or her capacity and becomes suggestible to the behavior of others. He assumes a passive position, does not play with learning, does not take risks, and waits for someone to show him the way, resolve the issue or tell him what needs to be done and how to act.

The anxious learner, when presenting a confusional picture, appears indecisive, fragile, wavering, oscillating, uncoordinated, disorganized, inattentive and forgetful. He may ask questions excessively and repeatedly, without time to reflect and elaborate, or juxtapose conflicting concepts. Your speech may change in rhythm and intonation, which indicate difficulty in organizing your thoughts and understanding the content.

Their behaviors may also indicate space-time disorientation, with prevailing insecurity. Sometimes, there is an exaggerated tendency to honor the teacher or other learners who are successful in learning, establishing a bond of dependence on learning.

Mediation with this learner is aimed at improving their ability to perceive themselves and the world, in terms of discrimination and psychic reorganization. While self-knowledge and the elaboration of anxiogenic triggers are being processed, the mediator can promote activities related to the ability to organize, order, classify, plan and program that contribute to managing the situation and controlling the ego. The mediator can offer himself as a safe container so that the learner can take risks with his ideas, for example, starting with a brainstorm dynamic, in which propositions are free, without organization and judgment and after that, explore and systematize ideas through mediated elaboration, without the situation being considered an evaluation [14, 15].

2.3.2 Paranoid anxiety

Abandoning and saying goodbye to the old and familiar to get in touch with the new unknown always leads to an experience of anxiety. If such anxiety is intense, it can become paralyzing, resulting in resistance to change [21] which prevents the academic from handling new content and information, as they conflict with what is already consolidated.

Breaking stereotypes is a necessary action in moments of learning, generating confusion and anxiety. These two common elements when something new is presented and the new gains an intense meaning of danger, another type of anxiety that can emerge in learning is paranoid anxiety [20, 22]. In paranoid anxiety, the learner inhibits, reduces and avoids contact with the object of knowledge [8] and adopts an attitude of hostility and distrust toward what is being presented.

Paranoid anxiety is related to the fear of being attacked and/or destroyed by the object of knowledge. It awakens the protective reaction, since situations are perceived as persecutory [14, 19]. The fear that the feeling of danger emanates prevails. The learner sees the new learning as threatening, attributes a negative valence and perceives the new reality as capable of disrupting him, feeling unprepared to face it. He cannot integrate the positive and negative valences of the object of knowledge.

Paranoid anxiety has points in common with the Kleinian paranoid-schizoid position. This situation is perceived by the learner as threatening and/or dangerous, and he reacts in a regressed way to freeze the tension. Fear prevails and triggers psychic inhibition as a protective reaction. The learner perceives the object of knowledge as capable of destroying it, disrupting it [14, 15, 19, 22, 23]. The solution is to create an imaginary situation that erases the danger, that is, removes this focus from consciousness and, at this moment, it is as if the learner no longer experiences that anxiogenic scene. It deals with the partial object.

Therefore, the anxious learner in the paranoid framework appears suspicious, fearful and may have panic attacks and is extremely sensitive to the presentation of new content. He avoids the experience and may procrastinate the learning task in an attempt to escape the anxiogenic situation [14, 15, 24].

The prevailing interactional behavior is the absence of permeability. Mental rigidity and cognitive paralysis predominate. The learner cannot trust to allow himself to experience interactional flexibility and come into contact with the object of knowledge. Contact barriers are established, which can lead to panic attacks in order to avoid interaction [25]. In the interaction with the teacher, two extremes of the same meaning can emerge: a) idolatry in a passive position waiting for the other to protect him, or b) rebellion in an attack position identifying the teacher as the very object of the persecuting knowledge and threat [5].

Both situations point to a lack of permeability, as there is no dialogue or confrontation of ideas, that is, there is no updating, and there is an avoidance of the object of knowledge. The objective is to avoid the anxiogenic source.

When the learner idealizes the teacher, he often attempts to establish a bond of adoration and tends to get closer by expressing curiosity about personal aspects of the person teaching, thus diverting the focus of learning. The learner expresses: “Nothing comes to mind,” “I went blank,” “I prefer not to identify myself, I will use a pseudonym.” They use various subterfuges to procrastinate and escape the anxiety factor.

The learner stipulates a negative valence to the object of knowledge, without even “toying” with it, thus, he is unable to integrate the positive and negative valences. He avoids getting closer to the object of knowledge, postponing pedagogical activities, not going deeper or dedicating attention and/or concentration to the topic studied and maintaining superficiality.

When this “playing dead” in the passive position of just waiting for time to pass does not work, the learner can reverse this energy that was trapped within himself, in the direction of attacking the other. “The best defense is attack,” says the popular saying. The learner who feels attacked, and cornered, may assume a challenging position toward the teacher, treating him aggressively through extreme questioning, in addition to comparing him with other people in the same role, without any basis in reality [14, 15, 24].

The mediation carried out by the teacher with the learner is aimed at reorganizing the evaluative parameters of new learning. As distrust prevails in these situations, the mediator should not make excessive demands, avoiding reinforcing in the learner the possibility of seeing him as an oppressor, judge and/or powerful.

The attitude of respect needs to be reflected in the care for others, in empathetic listening and in the appropriate choice of interactional patterns. The mediator can converse with the learner to raise internal questions about the pillars that support their perception. The mediator can raise reflections and not propose impositions on interpreting reality.

2.3.3 Depressive anxiety

This category results in the integration of positive and negative valences into a single object or situation, as the object is ambivalent (the learner hates it at the same time as he desires it). Here the valences are not mixed as in the case of confusional anxiety, as the university student is able to conceive of the existence of positive and negative aspects at the same time in a single learning object. A teacher can be annoying and cool at the same time, just like a subject or an assignment. The learner is able to perceive the opposites present in the same situation without having to dichotomize them [8, 24, 26].

When the subject finds himself faced with such a situation, he is afraid of losing what he has already managed to learn and, therefore, becomes depressed to allow himself to accept content that was different from what he believed before. The fear of loss can take on a greater dimension than it really is, which can lead to the appearance of very intense and frequent depressive behaviors, which tend to create obstacles in learning [18, 20].

Depressive anxiety is related to the fear of losing what has already been constructed as an object of knowledge, thus not being open to the new. The learner has the feeling of being unstructured due to the modification of the old knowledge that served as support [26]. Tends to maximize the importance, scope and impact of new knowledge. The learner juxtaposes positive and negative valences in an object of knowledge.

Anxious learners with depression tend to appear passive, fragile, sad, lacking energy and powerless, with low self-esteem and a low tolerance for frustration. Insomnia, mood lability, anorexia, intense crying, excessive optimism and disconnection with reality and episodes of euphoria and logorrhea can also be observed. In a recurring, insistent, superficial and/or compensatory way, they may seek to establish emotional bonds with everyday people.

Depressive anxiety is related to the Kleinian depressive position since the learner can already discern the self and the object of knowledge. He perceives the total object, and its parts [5]. From a Kleinian perspective, there is the fear of unlearning, of losing the loved object due to hatred and aggressive drives directed toward it, which destroys the object on which it depends. The person discovers their dependence on the object and even feels the need to protect it against their own destructive attacks. In this position, due to omnipotence, the fear of losing the good from the internalized object also arises [26].

3. Conclusion

The creation of the Typological Scale of Anxiety in University Students aims to collaborate with academics on their personal and professional development journey. In the stages of preparing the instrument, during the interactions that took place during the period of research, we noticed in the interest shown by the target audience the suitability of this proposal not only for university students but also for any learner, of different age groups, level of education or learning context, including the organizational field. The scale will not be presented as a solution to learning difficulties; however, it contributes to the advancement of studies on the epistemophilic obstacle.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues from the Research Group: Learning and Organizational Culture: Dialogic Emancipatory Narratives for their constant presence and contributions during the construction of the research record to construct the doctoral thesis.

“This work was carried out with the support of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - Brazil (CAPES) - Financing Code 001.”

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes/thanks/other declarations

This chapter was developed based on the doctoral thesis already defended and presented at the Institute of Education—Department of Psychology of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) with the objective of creating and validating a psychopedagogical scale to identify the types of anxiety present in university students’ learning.