Teachers academic expectations and psychological distress among adolescents in
secondary schools.
Academic stress among Indian students has been an issue of great concern due to high
competition of academic performance in Asian countries. Venkatachalam & Chellamuthu
(2019) conducted a descriptive study in Tamil Nadu, India, with the goal of identifying
sources of academic stress among higher secondary school students. The researchers
employed focus group discussions and surveys to achieve their goals, looking at both personal
and school-environmental factors of academic stress. The respondents were 198 higher
secondary students who were randomly selected from three different higher secondary
schools. The data show that academic stress is caused more by the academic environment than
by the personal environment. The top five reasons of academic stress were parental
expectations (cited by 96 percent of respondents), fear of failing exams (cited by 96 percent),
comparisons with other students (89.9%), grades competitiveness (89.4%), and taking too
many tests (cited by 74.7 percent). This informed the researcher in working to establish the
sources of academic expectations among school going adolescents. At the same time the
findings of the current study concur with this study in agreeing to the fact that there was
academic expectations from teachers among adolescents in private secondary schools in
Nairobi County.
Apart from teachers, there could also be an environmental or cultural source of academic
expectation for adolescents in schools. For example, students/children coming from a
particular culture or a particular socioeconomic background are expected to perform better
than others. An Ex post facto study conducted in Chile by Canales & Webb (2018), on
educational achievement of indigenous students in Chile, school composition and peer effects;
brought out that school socioeconomic background and indigenous status of the students
influenced their academic achievement. The study involved a review of national test score
data and an administering of questionnaires to students, teachers and parents. Analysis was
conducted through linear model and random intercept model. Therefore, it is clear from the
study that certain students, due to their background, are expected to perform in a certain way,
hence exposing them to some kind of pressure to perform.
Teachers are important persons in the life of any student, so they are bound to influence the
academic performance of all students depending on how they teach and the goals they set for
their students. These expectations have an impact not just on the pupils, but also on the
teachers. Teachers' expectations of students' achievements as a predictor of motivation to
teach were studied in Ethiopian secondary schools. Concurrent triangulation mixed method
research approach was used in this study. Questionnaires and focus group discussions were
used to gather information. The data was evaluated using descriptive statistics, t-tests,
regression, and Cohen tests on 368 secondary school teachers. The findings demonstrated that
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there was a link between teachers' enthusiasm to teach and their student expectations.
Students' academic conduct in school and academic achievement were also affected by these
expectations (Mulisa &Kassahun 2019). This study demonstrates that Ethiopian teachers
indeed have academic expectations of their students. The current research found that teachers
in private secondary schools in Nairobi County, Kenya, have academic expectations, and that
these expectations had a weak positive link with the psychological suffering that adolescents
feel.
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