Academic stress in teaching college students in IByCENECH: a comparative study between two degrees

Abstract

The following comparative study evaluates the academic stress on the students of degrees in Elementary school teaching and Special Education of the teaching college “Institucion Benemerita y Centenaria Escuela Normal del Estado de Chihuahua Profr. Luisa Urías Belderrain” during the 2015-2016 scholar cycle, looking for factors related to stress at a personal and family level, symptoms associated and confronting strategies. Its main objective is to measure the stress in both populations and establish differences, presenting the hypothesis that those students of Special Education posses higher levels due to the specific circumstances of their degree; also considering the new students manifest higher indexes due to their adaptation process. Being a mixed type of research, there were 12 students from a focus group and 52 from a group of volunteers that answered the SISCO academic stress inventory. The results are presented through meta-inferences, linking qualitative and quantitative data, giving it a higher validity. Amongst the results stands out the fact that second-grade students are the most affected by stress, contrary to what the hypothesis states; also making up symptomatology and weight gain as a new contribution to the literature. The general conclusion is 98% percent of the students are under stress for different reasons and in different measures, gender being a transcendent variable in the analysis.