Department of Education

TAGUDIN NATIONA HIGH SCHOOL

S.Y. 2021-2022

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reference:
Alia J. Crum, Modupe Akinola, Ashley Martin & Sean Fath (2017) The role of stress
mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and
threatening stress, Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 30:4, 379-
395, DOI: 10.1080/10615806.2016.1275585

This article by Crum, Akinola, Martin and Fath attempts to find out whether
change in mindset to stress has an effect to the cognitive, physiological and affective
stress responses. This study is founded on prior researches which suggest that modifying
stress may serve either to challenge or threaten one’s response to a stressful situation.

Findings show that stress has positive effects to people’s response to situations
given that its negative connotation is restricted through mind setting. Further, a stress-is-
enhancing mindset yields increases in anabolic hormones as compared to a stress-is-
debilitating mindset. Furthermore, the transforming power of mind-setting to stress
especially when it is projected positively as a way of challenging to accomplish a given
task can lead to better feeling and greater cognition. On the other hand, the negative
projection of stress in the mind will result to poor affective and cognitive outcomes.

Crum, AKinola, Martin and Fath share similar observations with the study
conducted by Jenkins A, Weeks MS, Hard BM. Both studies conclude that a short
manipulation (intervention in the study of Jenkins, Weeks, and Hard) designed to
generate a stress-is-enhancing mindset can improve responses to both challenging and
threatening stress. In conclusion, it can be gleaned that the mind is powerful that it can
actually dictate how one feels and reacts to situations. Such is called mind conditioning
where we can actually train our brain to modify our attitudes, thoughts and beliefs to
optimize positive thinking.

Reference:
Edutopia. How Productive Struggle Fires Up Learners. October 8, 2021.
https://www.edutopia.org/video/how-productive-struggle-fires-learners.
 This is a video discussion on how productive struggles being experienced by
students can actually improve learning. In here productive struggle is situated when
students are pushed beyond their comfort zone and are engaged in solving difficult
problems and activities within their ability. This engagement to productive struggle
results to dramatic improvement their learning outcomes.  

Common beliefs among students and even to teachers that a relaxed and low-
effort way of teaching and learning is effective. On the other hand, school work and
activities that students find difficult is viewed as resulting to ineffective learning.
Given these circumstances, students would prefer to work on simple activities and
manifest ease in doing their school work giving them the confidence that they have
gained mastery already of the lesson. However, when they are given difficult tasks
they would succumb to giving up resulting to frustrations. Students’ attitude toward
activities where they experience struggles limit their ability to think and reason out
critically.

I strongly agree with this presentation that students need to experience

productive struggle suited to their learning ability for them to fire up their learning
skills. I believe that students who are exposed to solving complex problem will turn
out smarter compared to those exposed to traditional learning. As educators, we must
prepare our students to deal with complex situations by introducing to them at their
own level productive struggle. This is a good training ground in producing students
who are sophisticated thinkers, innovators, and active doers. Most importantly,
students should also be guided in applying these struggles to new and challenging
ways in their daily lives, turning them to be resilient, critical thinkers and exuding
healthy attitude towards difficult situations.