Reducing Stress in the Classroom

“Generally speaking, we can’t do our best in school if we’re really struggling outside of it.”

These are the words of Dyson Associate Professor of Psychology Shirley Wang, PhD, who studies how to integrate wellness-based teaching strategies into the classroom. Primarily, she’s focused on giving the often vague concept of “mental health” some practical structure by improving classroom environments to help students be their best selves. 

Traditionally, the concepts of academics and student well-being are managed separately across a University. There’s the academic side—classes taught by professors, where students learn and immerse themselves in course material; and then there’s campus life and student affairs side, where departments invest in student well-being through programming and counseling. Because of the sometimes siloed nature of this setup, Shirley believes that interventions within the classroom–where mental health is not necessarily always naturally implemented, but can very obviously affect performance–can make a huge difference. 

As she elaborates, “My research is interested in trying to recognize that well-being is important for our students to be successful. Especially after the pandemic—which was a particularly difficult time for a lot of students—well-being and mental health has become more in the forefront of higher ed administration and faculty. Within that context, I’m interested in understanding how well-being and the academic context play a role together.”

A few years ago, Shirley implemented a new process into her classroom curriculum, which she describes as a very brief teaching intervention, that was meant to convey the extent to which that the two are linked—that well-being and academic abilities and achievement are correlated, and whether small implementations within a curriculum can help students achieve both. Based on the findings from the initial intervention, she was awarded a grant from the Association for Psychological Science to expand the study.

Generally speaking, we can’t do our best in school if we’re really struggling outside of it.

The exact nature of the study is currently being kept confidential so as to not impact the results of the intervention in progress. But on a broad scale its aim is to help students and faculty members think beyond simply assigning and getting work done, and consider factors such as; how can proper sleep be emphasized within the curriculum? Can students be presented with a choice of assignment or deadline that allows them to do their best work with less stress? Are there ways to tackle work that doesn’t encourage last-minute cramming?

Together, considering all of these factors holistically may not only reduce student stress, but create more engaged students who are better able to grasp course material and perform at a higher level. 

“What do we really want to get students from our class? What is actually required for students to effectively learn? Sometimes you need things to be concrete; for example, you may need there to be an in-class final on a certain day. But if there are other times where you can be flexible, how can that be implemented into a system that might help relieve student stress?”

Currently, the intervention is being rolled out across a number of different classes within Dyson. Based on the results, Shirley is hoping to expand it beyond Dyson and beyond Pace, so that mental health and well-being can be better addressed classrooms all over. 

“Well-being shouldn’t be one more thing on top of everything else. Academics and well-being ought to be together.”