Academic Stress and Its Sources Among Junior High School Students

Abstract

Knowing the sources of academic stress can be a beneficial foundation to treat it as one of the causes of teen's problems, especially at schools. Teachers, including counselling and guidance teachers can use it as a reference for supporting and helping the students to handle their stress and build their emotional resilience. This study aims to determine the sources of academic stress among junior high school. As many as 202 junior high school students were the participants of this study. By means of close and open questionnaires, this study tried to collect data on students' experiences, intensities, sources, and reasons for academic stress. The results of this showed that 98% of students had experienced academic stress with some intensities, namely "always" (57.4%), "often" (23.8%), "sometimes" (16.8%), and "never" (2%). The biggest source of academic stress came from the subject matter (26.7%). The reason most often cited by students was the difficulty of understanding the material. The second source of stress is assignments (18.3%) that students perceive as too much. The third source of stress is exams and teachers (16.8%). Students consider exams as a source of stress because the test items are difficult to work on, while teachers are seen as a source of stress because they sometimes are angry, emotional, impatient, and boring. The fourth source of stress is homework (14.9%) which is perceived as too much. Based on these findings, teachers are expected to be able to support students to be able to manage academic difficulties and motivate them to develop, enjoy the process, and optimize the quality of their learning. In addition, teachers are expected to apply and improve skills used to give feedback, present material, and build positive relationships with students in learning. Meanwhile, students should enhance their self-management and coping skills independently to deal with problems in the learning process in order to avoid academic stress.