Intervention Program To Reduce The Level Of Test Anxiety In A Primary School Class. A Pilot Study

Abstract

The aim of study is to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention program to reduce the level of test anxiety in a primary school class in the urban environment (N = 25, 2nd class). The level of test anxiety was evaluated using the Test Anxiety in Children, developed by Wren and Benson in 2004. The intervention program took place over a period of six weeks with a frequency of three times a week, consisting of six activities implemented in school in the personal development discipline with the help of the formative stories created for the purpose of the program, six activities based on independent work in solving some assessment task of the Language and Communication and Mathematics disciplines of didactic auxiliaries in order to prepare pupils for the Second Class National Assessment and six self-employed activities in homework completion after school classes. The program's effectiveness was performed by analyzing the two-stage results of the test using the intragroup comparison test. The results obtained lead to the conclusion that the level of test anxiety in second-class students in the experimental group is lower in the posttest (t = 2,328, p = 0,029), and the magnitude of the effect obtained indicates a moderate value. The results on subscales indicate statistically significant differences in the thought subscale (t = 2.54, p = 0.027) with lower posttest scores, and the effect size is moderate too.