From Leaving CertiFiCate to Leaving SChooL a Longitudinal Study ...

Academic Stress and the Leaving Certificate 79
those in the highest sixty per cent of Junior Certificate achievement levels;
this is likely to reflect the greater focus on doing well in the Leaving Certificate
exam among this group. Variation in stress levels is likely to reflect
the complexity of young people’s personal situations and family lives; it is
not surprising, therefore, that most of the variation is at the individual
rather than the school level (see the variance terms in Table 3.1). However,
certain aspects of the schooling process have a clear influence on student
stress levels. In keeping with previous research (Hannan et al., 1996;
Smyth, 1999), students who experience more positive interaction with
their teachers have lower stress levels (Model 1). The effect of positive
interaction is mediated through academic self-image, that is, the perceived
capacity of the student to cope with schoolwork; in other words, positive
interaction with teachers helps to reduce student stress levels because it
reassures them about how they are getting on academically. Negative
teacher-student interaction becomes significant and negative only when we
take account of academic self-image (compare coefficients in models 1
and 2). This is somewhat surprising since it might be expected that students
would feel under greater strain if they had negative relations with
teachers; it may be that these students have ‘withdrawn from the race’ and
are not experiencing the same exam-related stress as their peers. Students
who had been suspended at some point in sixth year had somewhat higher
stress levels (model 1) but this is related to lower academic self-images
among this group. The quality of relations among students is also influential,
with much higher levels of stress found among those who had experienced
bullying in the two weeks prior to the survey.
Aspects of schoolwork are found to influence current stress levels.
Students taking the Leaving Certificate Applied programme report lower
stress levels than those taking LCE or LCVP (model 1). This is likely to
reflect the way in which the emphasis on continuous assessment and project-work,
described in the study by Banks et al. (2010), helps to reengage
young people with schoolwork. Model 2 shows that the effect of
LCA is indeed due to enhanced views of their capacity to cope with
schoolwork among the group. Chapter Two documented the significant
number of students who expressed concern about the subject choices