Research On The Countermeasures Of Relieving Test Anxiety Of Junior Middle School Students: From The Perspective Of Mindfulness

Mindfulness intervention can effectively buffer adolescents’ test anxiety as proven by many empirical studies.However,previous studies mostly focused on the effects of interventions on populations with high test anxiety in term of standard mindfulness training program.Previous studies neglected from the perspective of school mental health education,designing mindfulness training programs that conforms to adolescents’ learning characteristics(e.g.,learning motivation)and characteristics of physical and mental development(e.g.,self-efficacy in emotional regulation)and can be effectively implemented in junior high school campuses to prevent the generation of test anxiety of Chinese adolescent’s students.Therefore,this study firstly explored the indirect effects of selfefficacy in emotional regulation and learning motivation on test anxiety among Chinese adolescent’s students(Including junior 2 and junior 3 students)and the direct effects of mindfulness and its five subdimensions.Secondly,this study investigated the actual needs of junior high school students on mindfulness training programs through Semi-structured interview.Finally,combine the quantitative results of the internal micro-mechanism with the actual demand results of the external campus mindfulness,in the basis of the above-mentioned results and mindfulness training programs,more targeted countermeasures and suggestions were put forward from the perspective of school mental health education to more effectively alleviate adolescent’s test anxiety.This study utilized cross-section design.Participants were 486 Grade 1 students and 837 Grade 2students from a junior high school.They self-reported with the questionnaires their mindfulness,selfefficacy in emotional regulation,learning motivation and test anxiety.The indirect effects of selfefficacy in emotional regulation and learning motivation were examined with the five-step test procedures proposed by Zhonglin Wen.The semi-structured interview method was used for investigating the information on test anxiety and acceptance of mindfulness and training among 88 junior high school students.The results revealed that the total mindfulness and its subdimension,description,perceptual actions and non-judgments could directly buffer adolescents’ test anxiety,but it was not true for the subdimension,observation and the inaction.Self-efficacy in emotional regulation mediates mindfulness alleviating test anxiety,showing an indirect mediation role in association of total mindfulness,its subdimension description and awareness action with test anxiety.For Grade 1 students,both internal learning motivation and external learning motivation played a positive role in alleviating test anxiety.For Grade 2 students,internal learning motivation played a mediating role in alleviating test anxiety,but it was not true for external learning motivation.The interview results revealed that there was serious situation in test anxiety among Chinese students in junior middle school and that there was lack of effective mitigation measures.Students mostly agreed that mindfulness training is beneficial.Some feasible suggestions were proposed as follow.Both collective practice in class and private practice after class were performed when the school implements mindfulness training.More interesting and easy-to-operate programs were designed,such as mindfulness breathing and mindfulness eating raisins.The effective practice was confined to about30 minutes each excise and 2-3 times a week.It was better to share the feeling or record the experience after every practice.Parents do not need to supervise adolescents’ mindfulness exercises,but they can communicate and share with their children.Finally,in the basis of the above-mentioned results,from the perspective of mindfulness training,combined with the micro-mechanisms(direct and indirect effects)of mindfulness affecting test anxiety and the students’ real needs for mindfulness,we propose strategies that can be implemented on campus to alleviate test anxiety of junior high school students.