Emotional Issues Affecting K-12 Student Academic Performance

Introduction

Classroom settings are emotion-filled areas of learning for children. For instance, children may experience excitement when learning a new lesson, anxiety and hope when awaiting test results, pride in the face of success, surprise upon finding a novel solution, shame after academic failure, or boredom during lessons. Social emotions such as rage, empathy, appreciation, disdain, or jealousy directed at fellow students and educators also play a role within classroom settings (Lee & Shute, 2010). Children may also bring home- and community-related emotions into school, which can, despite being external to classroom settings, strongly impact their learning experiences — including the emotional disruption caused by familial stress.

All emotions are capable of significantly impacting student instruction and academic success. Emotions facilitate attentiveness or contribute to inattentiveness, influence motivation to learn, shape learning strategies, and affect learning-related self-regulation. Moreover, emotions form part of a child's identity, shaping their personality and physical and mental wellbeing (Mushtaq & Khan, 2012). From a scholastic standpoint, emotions are vital owing to their impact on knowledge and skill acquisition and development. However, another key academic objective significant in itself is each individual pupil's emotional health.

Problem Statement and Purpose

An individual's negative-positive emotional balance constitutes a factor in their life satisfaction. Satisfaction represents a mental state — a person's mental evaluative process. Life satisfaction may be understood in terms of how positively individuals assess their overall quality of life. Emotions are regarded as fundamental adaptive and motivating processes that successfully influence reasoning and sound judgment (Lee & Shute, 2010; Mushtaq & Khan, 2012). Emotions also carry both biological-adaptive and psychological-constructive functions, and affect social interactions, goal attainment, cognitive processing, and personality. They act as mediators between continuously evolving circumstances and a person's behavioral responses, thus serving as key adaptive personal functions.

Attainment of educational qualifications is vital for success in life, particularly for K-12 public school students, since their scholastic achievement lays the foundation for their choice of further study. K-12 schooling therefore represents a critical phase of education, establishing the groundwork for higher education and a successful career. All students ought to be appropriately supported so that they may acquire requisite knowledge, capabilities, and skills. K-12 pupils are largely young children and teenagers (Khurshid et al., 2015). The teenage years in particular constitute a crucial phase of life with regard to choosing a field of study. Emotional issues have major effects on K-12 public school pupils. The significance of this study lies in its focus on the emotional issues that Kindergarten through 12th grade pupils in public schools face, their involvement in learning, their scholastic progress, and the relationships among these elements.

This research may prove beneficial to students' parents as well as school administrators, potentially aiding them in planning, formulating, and executing policies geared toward enhancing the emotional health of children. Parents may apply research findings to resolve their children's home- and family-linked emotional issues. The research may also serve to enhance student awareness of their own emotions that adversely influence their performance at school (Lee & Shute, 2010).

The chief question to be addressed is: What emotional factors are most strongly associated with academic achievement levels in K-12 students?

Literature Review

Researchers have shown that pupils undergo a wide range of emotions at school — from regular lessons and studying to sitting for exams and tests. They experience both negative and positive emotions, which may be frequent and intense. Emotions linked to events outside of school may also manifest in classroom settings. However, a large share of the emotions expressed at school can be traced to learning environments themselves. Four types of academic emotion prove particularly important to student learning: social, topic-based, achievement, and epistemic emotions (Pekrun & Linnenbink-Garcia, 2012).

The relationship between educational performance and behavioral or emotional problems has been studied using student data gathered from educators via the 25-item Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), which assesses five domains of child psychological adjustment. On the basis of educator responses, researchers rate overall problem areas and areas of satisfactory functioning on a 0–40 scale, from which student risk of medically significant behavioral or emotional issues may be evaluated (Valiente, Swanson, & Eisenberg, 2012). Children scoring 0–11 constitute the low-risk group, scores of 12–15 make up the moderate-risk cluster, while scores of 16–40 signify high risk of medically significant behavioral or emotional problems.

Strong evidence exists connecting behavioral and emotional problems to learning difficulties and poor scholastic achievement. These links predict academic failure, dropout rates, drug dependency, unemployment, and delinquent conduct — outcomes that affect both the individual child and society at large (Soomro & Clarbour, 2012). Developed nations emphasize the cultivation of healthy personalities in childhood, which facilitates success in adulthood. This focus, however, appears to be lacking in many developing societies, which suffer from insufficient caregiver and professional awareness of children's emotional and psychological health. From general observation, it may be inferred that when children visit physicians or child specialists for routine health checks, practitioners often fail to screen for psychological issues. Overlooking problem behaviors and negative emotions results in weak performance at school (Simpson, Patterson, & Smith, 2011). As a result, a number of students are unable to reach their actual scholastic potential — an issue that can persist into their careers.

Aggression and anxiety present challenges for both teachers and pupils (Simpson et al., 2011). Children suffering from internalizing behavioral issues often go unnoticed in class because they avoid disrupting the teaching process. When these issues go undetected and untreated, academic performance, self-confidence, life skills, and interpersonal relationships are all negatively affected. Externalizing behavioral issues are similarly linked to educational problems. Researchers report that hyperactivity and inattentiveness represent greater contributors to scholastic difficulties than childhood aggressiveness alone, while delinquency and antisocial conduct are strongly correlated with poor academic achievement in adolescence. Preliminary research also suggests that teenagers with externalizing and internalizing psychiatric disorders who are in therapy display higher social anxiety and malicious aggression scores compared to typical school-going peers (Soomro & Clarbour, 2010).

Evidence connecting internalizing issues with academic progress over time has not been entirely consistent. Research associating these issues with educational attainment reveals that apparent, though inconsistent, academic difficulties are linked to changes in internalizing symptoms. Significant academic problems have been observed among adolescents meeting psychiatric diagnostic criteria for anxiety, depression, and other internalizing disorders (Soomro & Clarbour, 2012). Additional support linking internalizing conditions to poor educational outcomes is varied and limited, and research findings remain equivocal in broader studies examining the predictive value of continuously distributed internalizing symptom scores.

Self-worth constitutes a key indicator of scholastic success and personal adjustment, according to one body of research (Soomro & Clarbour, 2012). Individuals with high self-confidence and a positive self-image are more likely to implement adaptive learning strategies. Nurmi, Aunola, and Stattin (2000) concluded that poor self-worth was linked to maladaptive educational strategies, which were in turn linked to classroom maladjustment and both externalizing and internalizing problematic behavior. Researchers also discovered a positive relationship between social self-image — as measured by an EBS subscale — and academic proficiency as measured by the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPCC).

Numerous scholars have corroborated the negative effect of depression on academic performance at K-12 levels in public schools. Depression has been linked to academic failures, with depressed students typically dedicating less time and effort to homework and learning, thereby achieving lower grade point averages (GPAs). An American College Health Association national survey conducted in 2011 at two- and four-year colleges found that nearly three in ten college students suffering from depression experienced difficulty functioning. A 2006 university counseling center study found a recent increase in students presenting with psychological issues. Depression was prevalent across U.S. higher education institutions, and to support student success, counseling and health centers have been established at many colleges and universities.

Drawing on the evidence above — though it is occasionally inconsistent — one can conclude that emotional and behavioral issues adversely impact scholastic performance and, in turn, promote other maladaptive behaviors in children. Researchers reveal that a number of K-12 public school students exhibit problem behaviors (Aunola et al., 2000; Soomro & Clarbour, 2012) that can affect their scholastic success. It is therefore important to examine the association between emotional behavior and scholastic achievement in this group, particularly among high school teenagers preparing for college or university. The current research has been designed to examine emotional challenges via a scale measuring behavioral and emotional issues (Soomro, 2010).