Räkna med stress

Sammanfattning: Adolescent subjective health and mental problems have become a public health concern, not only in Sweden but worldwide. When stress becomes a part of everyday life you tend to ignore it and disregard the fact that chronic stress is a severe disease. Education in the school system shall promote the development and learning of all pupils adapted to each of the individuals’ circumstances and needs. Research shows that high-performing students are especially at risk for chronic stress related malfunctioning.The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the influence of mathematic education in developing stress among female high-performers in secondary school. Four 16-year-old girls were interviewed on their experience of math education,stress and the relations between the two. The findings show that how teachers carry out education has a great impact on the students’ well being, which in turn affects how they learn. The teacher holds the most important part. A growth mindset will push development from good to great. Skilled teachers can create rich mathematical problems for their students. Letting go of socio-mathematic norms focusing on fast-forward, are also important measures. Continued research should therefore focus on teacher-education. In pedagogical science there is a lack of psychology and the common approach of neuroscience to learning and child development. The subject of educational psychology is a mixture of neuroscience, psychology and pedagogy that is common in other parts of the world, but not in Sweden. Such knowledge, that is based on experiments linked to the brain functions, is important for understanding children's development and comparing methods for teaching. The two research fields need to learn more from each other. Didactics already provide perspectives to the student’s experiences and motivations and teachers need to use didactics as a useful tool in education. We face a real challenge; the group of high performing students’ long-term health is at risk. There might be a ticking bomb- Stress, and counting.