Secondary school learners' stress coping strategies

Abstract

Stress can have a significant effect on learners’ long-term physical and mental well-being. There are various strategies that learners use to cope with stress. Some of these strategies are adaptive and others are maladaptive. It has been difficult to ascertain the types of stress-coping strategies used by learners in various schools in the Further Education and Training band (FET) in secondary schools. This is a multi-method research in which both quantitative and qualitative research strategies were used to study the stress-coping strategies among FET band learners. The study used a stratified random sampling of 54 Grade 10 to 12 learners whose ages are between 15 and 21 years from eight rural schools in Vhembe District of the Limpopo Province. The questionnaire and interview were used in data generation during the study. Quantitative data were processed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21to generate descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were processed through thematic and narrative methods. Academic related problems were the major stressors among the students. The most frequent coping strategies being used by the learners are both negative and positive coping strategies, adaptive and maladaptive in nature.