Alleviation: An International Journal of Nutrition, Gender & Social Development, ISSN 2348-9340
Volume 4, Number 4 (2017), 1-9
© Arya PG College, Panipat & Business Press India Publication, Delhi
www.aryapgcollege.com
Academic Stress of Graduate Teacher Trainees in Relation to their Socio-Economic Status
Introduction
In 21st century, the world is changing very rapidly. Everyone is surviving for superiority today. A very high academic achievement has become an important need to seek admission in good courses. Academic achievement is of paramount importance particularly in the present socio-economic, cultural and technological age and parents desire that their children should climb the ladder of performance as high as possible. This desire ultimately gets transmitted to children also and as a result they want to have an edge on every other child and excel everyone in academic performance. The mount expectations of parents lead to frustration and disappointment. Hence maladjustment arises in the educational world. The problem of academic adjustment is a current issue of educational world. It needs serious consideration. Academic adjustment means adjustment tasks of dealing successfully with school and experience attached with school. Educational adjustment indicates how far a student is satisfied with the school administration. If there is something wrong with any aspect of adjustment, it would reversely affect their academic achievement. There are many variables which affect academic adjustment such as academic stress, socio-economic status, academic achievement, self-concept and personality pattern etc.
Academic stress is a type of stress related to school. There are different sources of academic stress like different classes, poor time management, poor study skills, conflict with teacher, etc. Academic stress among students is very common. Social or academic atmosphere encourages adolescents to consequently improve their self-image which is in a continual stage of redefinition. Stress is partly created by parental pressure too. When students cannot rise up to that expectation, then they suffer from frustration, physical stress, aggression, undesirable complexes and depression. Gupta and Khan (1987) stated that Academic Stress is a mental distress with respect to some anticipated frustration associated with academic failure or even awareness of the possibility of such failure. Shah (1988) in the context of school said that academic stress means a previous sense of urgency to learn all these things that were related to or prescribed by the school.
Socio-economic status refers to socio and economic standing. A person who has high standing in the community, a good income and who lives in a well-furnished house is said to have good socio-economic status. It refers to a cluster of factors e.g. occupation, qualification, income, cultural influence, religious belief, political set up, family relationship and living standards. It determines the identity of an individual in society. It determines how much one can aspire and achieve keeping in view his standard of living. Socio-economic status is the level indicative of both the social and economic position of an individual or group.
The review of related literature implies that the importance of academic stress has raised important issues for educational researchers. Researchers have come with varied results at a time contradicting or complementing each other related to academic stress, academic achievement and other demographical variables.
Although some work has been done in the field of academic stress of students, yet least work has been conducted in the field of academic stress of students in relation to socio-economic status. Hence, the investigator felt the need for such a study. The present findings will help the guidance workers, parents, counsellors and the teacher to understand the academic stress of students in relation to socio-economic status. The present study was undertaken with the following objectives:
• To find out the relationship between academic stress and socio-economic status of graduate teacher trainees.
• To find out the relationship between academic stress and socio-economic status of male graduate teacher trainees.
• To find out the relationship between academic stress and socio-economic status of female graduate teacher trainees.
• To study the academic stress of graduate teacher trainees in terms of socio-economic status.
• To study the academic stress of graduate male teacher trainees in terms of socio-economic status.
• To study the academic stress of graduate female teacher trainees in terms of socio-economic status.
Methodology
A sample of 200 students graduate teacher trainees was selected from the Educational Colleges (Kenway College of Education, Abohar; DAV College of Education, Abohar; MD College of Education, Abohar; DAV College of Education, Fazilka; Joyti B.Ed. College, Fazilka) of District Fazilka. “Bisht Battery of Stress Scale” by Bisht (1971) and “Socio-Economic Status Scale” by Bhardwaj (2001) were used.
In order to make use of the statistical techniques for analyzing the data in the present study, it was thought to test normality of data distribution.K-S (Kolmogrov-Smirnov) was calculated to see whether data fulfilled the assumption of normality. Descriptive statistics namely mean S.D and t-ratio were calculated to see the significance of difference between academic stress of high and low socio-economic status. Product Moment method of correlation was applied to study the correlation between academic stress and socio-economic status.
It can be seen from the Table 3 that correlation value between academic stress and socio economic status was -0.126 which was less than the table value at 0.05 level of significance. Therefore there was not significant correlation between academic stress and socio economic status of graduate teacher trainees.
t-ratio between academic stress of high and low socio-economic status was 0.795 which was not significant (Table 6). Therefore there was no significant difference between academic stress of high and low socio-economic status of graduate teacher trainees.
Conclusion
In professional colleges, trainees focus on their career and mastery in the coursesand not on other factors. Parents must give congenial environment to their children at home so that they achieve maximum with least academic stress. Teachers should not consider socio-economic status of students, they should avoid favouritism.
Teachers, parents and guidance workers should focus on male counterparts because they bother about socio-economic status. Boys must be properly guided and counseled so that they concentrate on their career not on their socio-economic status.
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