Presenter: Tanner Jefferies
Authors: Tanner Jefferies, Kohlton Darrington, Jennifer Mraz-Craig, Lance Forshee
Faculty Advisor: Tanner Jefferies
Institution: Southern Utah University
In today's education system fear is a common and complex problem found in Elementary schools, Middle schools, High schools, and Colleges. It is unknown what effect fear has specifically on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math students) students at the college level. The objective of this study is to determine which specific Fear Tactics had a positive, motivating effect versus a negative, demotivating effect on the STEM students. We performed semi-structured interviews to collect the data and used an inductive coding approach to ultimately group the data. All of the Fear Tactics from this study were categorized into three different categories on why they worked on students: Motivation, Guidance, and Fear of Failure. Specific tactics such as “Good luck passing” was indicated by students to be a harmful tactic and “This is going to be hard/this is serious” was indicated by students to be a helpful tactic. By accumulating a specific list of harmful Fear Tactics we can help eliminate these tactics in the classroom and replace them with positive tactics to help create a positive learning environment.