ABSTRACT
The adolescence stage is the time of rapid physical, psychological, and social changes. The changes themselves create stress for the adolescent because these have to be accepted. Moreover, the environment that surrounds the adolescent can have a positive or negative effect on the development of their personality. Adolescents spend a lot of time at school where they are subjected to academic stress (Jain, Billaiya, & Malaiya, 2017; Liu & Lu, 2012). Until now, no studies have been conducted in Latvia on academic stress at the stage of adolescence. The aim of the study is to analyse adolescent academic stress in Latvia and Lithuania and find coping opportunities in the school environment. The study was conducted in the framework of INTERREG Latvia – Lithuania project “Developing of Social Psychological Support Service System through Implementation of Method of Positive Coping Strategies and Enhancement of Social Inclusion for People in Vulnerable Groups” (POZCOPING). The participants of the study were 652 adolescents from Latvia and Lithuania aged 11 to 17. The results were obtained using the long form of the Adolescent Coping Scale Second Edition (ACS-2) (Frydenberg & Lewis, 2011) where the adolescents were offered to identify a problem which they face most often and which creates stress and on the Likert scale (from 1 to 5) assess the use of the problem-solving approaches offered (how often they are used) and their effectiveness (how often particular behaviour helps). The data were analysed using AQUAD and SPSS 22.0 software. The results show that in 437 cases, or 67 %, the adolescents are subjected to academic stress every day. As a result of the study, it is concluded that the school environment is important for improving the situation, which largely depends on the teachers’ competence to recognize the symptoms of academic stress and their ability to provide support for the adolescent in the acquisition of adaptive stress coping strategies.
KEYWORDS
adolescent, academic stress, stress coping strategies, school environment, teacher’s competence