Teachers’ strategies for managing shy students’anxiety at school

(1)

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rnpy20

Nordic Psychology

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rnpy20

Teachers’ strategies for managing shy students’

anxiety at school

Geir Nyborg, L. Heidi Mjelve, Anne Arnesen, W. Ray Crozier, Gunnar Bjørnebekk & Robert J. Coplan

To cite this article: Geir Nyborg, L. Heidi Mjelve, Anne Arnesen, W. Ray Crozier, Gunnar

Bjørnebekk & Robert J. Coplan (2022): Teachers’ strategies for managing shy students’ anxiety at school, Nordic Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/19012276.2022.2058072

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19012276.2022.2058072

Published online: 09 Apr 2022.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 24

View related articles

View Crossmark data

(2)

Teachers ’ strategies for managing shy students ’ anxiety at school

GEIR NYBORG¹, L. HEIDI MJELVE¹, ANNE ARNESEN², W. RAY CROZIER³, GUNNAR BJøRNEBEKK^1,2&

ROBERT J. COPLAN⁴

Correspondence address: Geir Nyborg, Department of Special Needs Education, Faculty of Education, Helga Engs Hus, P.O Box 1140 Blindern, Oslo, 0318, Norway. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The aim of this quantitative study was to analyze teachers’ most common and perceived effective strategies for reducing anxiety in shy elementary-school students. Participants were 275 elementary-school teachers, representative of the teacher population of Norway.

Participants nominated a shy student they had taught and completed a questionnaire including strategies for reducing anxiety, reporting their use and effectiveness of each strategy. Latent class and proﬁle models identiﬁed groups of teachers that differed in terms of how often they applied strategies and in how useful they found their attempts to intervene. Strategy use and usefulness ratings were consistent across participants although there was evidence of an association with student grade, student gender and school size on a number of strategies. A consistent theme across the strategies is the reliance on protective strategies, which may help a child cope with anxiety in the short term but can be less productive in the longer term. Results are discussed in terms of best practices for teachers in helping shy students cope with anxiety at school.

Keywords: elementary school, shyness, anxiety, teacher beliefs, teacher strategies

Introduction

Shyness is a temperamental trait characterized by reticence in social settings accompanied by self-consciousness and symptoms of anxiety (Crozier, 1995). A substantial body of research reports that shyness is potentially disadvantageous at school (Kalutskaya et al., 2015), and that teachers can play a critical role in helping shy students overcome their difﬁ- culties (Coplan & Rudasill, 2016). Notwithstanding, there has been limited research to date speciﬁcally focusing on strategies teachers implement to reduce anxiety among their shy students.

Accordingly, this study investigated teachers’use of strategies intended to reduce anxiety in shy students, in a nationally representative sample of Norwegian elementary school teachers. We were particularly interested in identifying strategies that were reported to be

1University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;

2Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development, Oslo, Norway;

3Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK;

4Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

https://doi.org/10.1080/19012276.2022.2058072

RESEARCH ARTICLE

(3)

most frequently used by teachers, as well as which ones were perceived as most effective in reducing anxiety. In addition, we explored variation in the use and usefulness of these strategies as a function of student, teacher, and school characteristics.

Overview of shyness at school

In early childhood, shyness typically manifests as wariness in the face of unfamiliar people and situations (Rubin et al.,2009). Shy children are hypothesized to possess a relatively low threshold for physiological arousal, as evidenced by a constellation of physiological characteristics (e.g., faster heart rate, higher cortisol) that differentiate them from their more soci- able counterparts (Miskovic & Schmidt,2012). Among older children, shyness also comes to encompass feelings of self-consciousness and embarrassment in situations of perceived social evaluation (Gazelle,2010). From a motivational perspective, shy children are thought to experience an inner-conﬂict between a desire to interact with others (i.e., social approach motivation) and the reluctance to do so because wariness and socio-evaluative concerns (i.e., social avoidance motivation) (Eggum-Wilkens et al.,2015).

In this regard, it has been suggested school can be a particularly challenging for shy children (Kalutskaya et al., 2015). In support of this notion, shyness has been associated with academic under-achievement, school absences, peer exclusion and victimization, difﬁculties in forming relationships with teachers and fellow students, as well as loneliness and lower self-esteem (Crozier, 1995; Evans, 2010; Findlay et al., 2009). Perhaps most consistently, childhood shyness is robustly associated with measures of social anxiety (Coplan et al., 2013; Weeks et al.,2016). For example, Findlay et al. (2009) reported that, in responses to self-report questionnaires completed by a large sample of children aged 9 to 11 years, scores on the Children’s Shyness Questionnaire (Crozier, 1995) correlated highly (r¼0.61) with the Social Anxiety Scale for Children Revised (la Greca & Stone, 1993). Findlay et al.

(2009) also reported signiﬁcant positive correlations between shyness and measures of negative affect and loneliness, and signiﬁcant negative correlations with self-concept, loneliness and an index of well-being.

Indeed, there is ongoing debate within the literature concerning the nature of relations between shyness and the diagnostic category of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), and whether these are distinct constructs or differ in degree (Rapee & Coplan, 2010). However, many researchers maintain that temperamental shyness is most appropriately conceptualized as a vulnerabilitytoward the later development of anxiety disorders (Rapee & Coplan, 2010). In support of this notion, extreme shyness in childhood is considered one of the strongest predictors of later clinical anxiety disorders, particularly social anxiety (Sandstrom et al.,2020).

Notwithstanding, many shy children do not go on develop social anxiety—and many adults with social anxiety were not shy as children (Crozier, 2014). Such evidence draws attention to the protective factors that are associated with more positive outcomes for shy children, both at school and in the longer term (Coplan et al.,2020).

Shyness, anxiety, and teachers

When teachers are asked to characterize the shyness of students, they typically identifyanx- iety as a central component (Bosacki et al., 2011). For example, in a qualitative interview study, Norwegian teachers referred to shy elementary school students as being “anxious”:

(4)

they avoid making mistakes, appear fearful, seek stability, need to be in control and can be over dependent on adults (Mjelve et al.,2019). Mjelve et al. (2019) also reported that teachers’expressed concerns primarily about three aspects of shy students’adjustment, including anxiety, as well as withdrawn behaviors and low self-esteem.

Research has also investigated teachers’use of strategies directed at helping shy students to overcome their difﬁculties in school (see Coplan & Rudasill,2016for a review). In one of the earliest studies, Brophy and Bohrkemper (1989) interviewed a sample of experienced teachers (n¼98) about their general strategies for working with shy and withdrawn students in grades from kindergarten to 6th grade and also elicited the teachers’responses to vignettes describing hypothetical shy students. Response categories were pre-selected and derived by the authors from a review of the literature and inspection of a sample of interviews with participating teachers. Three general strategies were commonly mentioned:

modelling and instruction to encourage greater participation; attempts to provide a sup- portive environment for the child and boost his or her self-esteem; and shaping desirable behavior. Frequencies of reported use of more speciﬁc strategies addressed at shyness were also presented. These included: enlisting peer support, assignment to speciﬁc roles in the classroom, reassurance, praise for academic success, and encouraging the student to speak up.

These strategies, and variants of them, appear in subsequent research that is based upon a design incorporating vignettes featuring hypothetical shy children, and response options using researcher pre-selected strategies. For example, Coplan et al. (2011) reported teachers’ selection of social learning strategies, such as the use of encouragement and praise, and peer-focused strategies. Deng et al. (2017) reported greater use of social learning strategies for shy students relative to use with “average”and“exuberant”students among a sample of pre-service elementary-school teachers. Strategies referred to promotion of social skills, involving a classmate in problem solving, praising the student for appropriate behavior, and encouraging him or her to join activities. Conversely, participants were less likely to use

“high-powered”strategies (direct intervention, punishment) with shy students.

Bosacki et al. (2014) applied qualitative methodology, conducting guided conversational semi-structured interviews with ﬁve elementary-school teachers. There were references in the interviews to teacher encouragement of shy students’ collaboration with their peers, and there was more emphasis in this interview study, relative to previous research, on understanding the reasons for the child’s quietness, on teachers’sensitivity to the shy student’s needs, and on issues of trust and safety. Making the shy feel safe was also a prominent theme in teachers’ use of socio-support strategies in a study of kindergarten teachers reported by Thijs et al. (2006). Nyborg et al. (2020) found the same tendency in another qualitative study. Interviews of teachers indicated sensitivity to how shyness impedes student engagement in activities that required oral contributions. The strategies the teachers used to encourage participation mainly focused on reducing the studentshigh level of anxiety when engaging in oral activities.

Whereas these studies are valuable in delineating the range of strategies that teachers endorse, they suffer from some limitations. For example, there are insufﬁcient details about theapplicationof strategies. To know that teachers report being prepared to use a strategy does not go far enough: research is needed into what strategies are used and when, how they are adjusted to take account of individual differences in shyness, and whether

(5)

strategies are evaluated and modiﬁed. This is necessarily a large question, or set of questions, that needs to be approached in various ways.

The present study

The aim of the present research was to begin to address these complex issues by focusing on teachers’ strategies for managing shy student’s anxiety within the school setting.

Furthermore, it is novel and valuable for research to involve teachers who have specific experience working with individual shy children in their class, to complement and extend previous approaches relying upon samples of student teachers or teachers responding to vignettes of hypothetical students. It is also novel and valuable to investigate teachers’ responses to the strategies that have been specifically identified by fellow teachers (within the same population and for the same student-age group), rather than respond to strategies that are specified by the researchers. We asked respondents to concentrate on one particular shy student. This has the advantage of face validity, asking teachers to describe an individual child, and it encourages teachers to think about strategies for particular students. Indeed, results from our previous research using this methodological approach has indicated that teachers understand and report that each shy child has distinctive characteristics (Mjelve et al.,2022). In this regard, we have the opportunity to uncover both unique approaches, as well as strategies that might apply across a large sample of shy children.

Researchers should also be sensitive to variation in school context, for example age- related changes in pedagogy and classroom organization. A child’s age might be a signiﬁ- cant factor in teachers’preferences for strategies. Strategies appropriate for a younger child may be deemed inappropriate or ineffective for an older child, for example when a teacher agrees to meet a child at the school gate before classes begin. There is evidence that the nature of shyness changes over the school years, with the growth of self-conscious anxieties about being negatively evaluated becoming increasingly prominent (Eggum-Wilkens et al., 2015). Thus, how shyness is displayed in the classroom and how strategies should be tail- ored to suit individual students will vary with the age of the student. Indeed, conspicuously helping the shy student may only augment his or her self-consciousness.

The student’s gender might also be an issue in teachers’ choice of strategies. Although there is no consistent evidence of gender differences in shyness among younger children, with increasing age there is a tendency for girls to be more likely to report being shyer than boys are (Doey et al.,2014). Adolescent girls are also more likely than boys to be diag- nosed with social anxiety disorder (Ranta et al., 2007). On the other hand, attitudes of parents and peers seem to be more negative about shy boys than about shy girls, perhaps reﬂecting the notion that shyness is less socially acceptable among boys. However, similar attitudes have not been detected among teachers (see Doey et al., 2014, for a review).

Although there exists evidence of a gender difference in perceptions of shyness within the age group investigated here, we do not know whether teachers adjust their strategies to take into account the shy students’gender or rate the usefulness of strategies differentially.

Finally, teacher experience is also a potential inﬂuence on their choice of strategies. It is possible that more years in the classroom and the increased likelihood of teaching shy students provide opportunities to develop and observe the effectiveness of speciﬁc strategies.

We have no speciﬁc hypotheses about the inﬂuences on uses of strategies with shy

(6)

students of teachers’age and gender, class size or school size. Although these can influence teaching strategies in general, for example, smaller class size affords greater use of individual-targeted strategies we have no specific hypotheses concerning shy students. We label measures of these potential influencesdemographic variables.

In summary, the present study seeks to answer the following questions:

1. Which speciﬁc strategies for managing shy students’anxiety are rated as most and least useful by elementary-school teachers and how frequently are strategies used?

2. To what extent do speciﬁc demographic variables inﬂuence teachers’ ratings of usefulness and use of the anxiety strategies for shy students? We test hypotheses about the demographic variables students’ grade, students’ gender and teacher experience.

We control for the effects of school size, class size, teacher age and teacher gender.

3. Can different latent proﬁles of teachers’perceived usefulness and latent classes of their use of the anxiety strategies with shy students be identiﬁed, and, if so, do student grade and gender and teacher experience differentiate them?

4. If latent variables for reported perceived usefulness and use are identified, is membership of these profiles and classes associated, in the sense that that groupings of teachers that, on the whole, i.e., across the set of strategies, find the strategies more useful also tend to use them more frequently?

Method

The present study is part of a second stage of a larger study of Norwegian teachers’beliefs about shyness and their strategies used for shy students in elementary school (Mjelve et al., 2019). In theﬁrst stage, 19 teachers who had successful experience in working with shy students as recommended by professionals including educational counsellors and elementary- school principals participated in individual (n¼8) and focus group (n¼11) interviews that covered teachers’ understanding of shyness and their approaches for supporting shy children (Mjelve et al.,2019). The strategies teachers reported during the interviews in this initial stage formed the basis of the questionnaire about strategies that was constructed for the second stage of the study. This second stage is a survey administered to a representative sample of teachers. Recruitment of participants was in accordance with the Norwegian Centre for Research Data requirements (Project number 254982).

Participants

We calculated that a representative sample size of 400 teachers would be sufﬁcient to gen- eralize the results to the Norwegian population of teachers (grades 1–7). Then, from public list of elementary schools, teachers across the country were randomly invited until at least 400 teachers had agreed to participate. 305 teachers (80% females) from 286 schools (grades 1–7) responded. The schools ranged in size, were located in both urban and rural districts in all regions of the country and included students from a variety of socio-eco- nomic backgrounds. The mean school size (297) and the mean class size (23) were close to the national average size. Also, the gender distribution of teachers (80.3% females) was similar to the distribution of elementary teachers (see Table 1). Due to the lack of

(7)

experience in teaching a shy student reported by 30 of the 305 responding teachers, the ﬁnal sample size was 275.

Missing data

Ninety-ﬁve teachers who initially had agreed to participate in the study did not return completed on-line questionnaires. Given the calculated sample size for a representative sample, this resulted in a 24% missing data rate for the teacher ratings. Missing teachers worked in Table 1. Overview teachers and schools.

Variable n %

Teachers 305 1.5^a

Teacher gender Female 245 80.3^b

Male 60 19.7^b

Teacher age 29 years 39 12.8

30–39 years 72 23.6

40–49 years 108 35.4

50–59 years 64 21

60 years 22 7.2

Years worked as a teacher <5 years 69 22.6

5–10 years 54 17.7

>10 years 182 59.7

Schools (Grade 1–Grade 7) 302 19^c

School size (number of students)

Mean 296.6^d

Min–Max 22–1000

100 49 16.2

101–300 106 35.1

301–500 112 37.1

501 35 11.6

Missing 3 1.0

Class size (number of students)

Mean 22.6^e

Min–Max 3–83

15 62 20.3 16 234 76.7

Missing 9 3.0

a%of total elementary teachers in Norway.

bGender distribution similar to the national percentage of teachers in Norwegian elementary schools.

c%of total elementary schools in Norway.

dAverage size of elementary schools in Norway is 225.

eAverage size of elementary classroom in Norway is 25. Size15 is deﬁned as a small class (Skoleporten,2020).

(8)

the same schools as those who participated; nevertheless, we have no information as to why these teachers did not complete the questionnaire. Due to missing data of contextual information for nine cases, analyses including demographic variables are based onn¼266.

Procedure

Based on analyses of the interview transcripts in the first stage of the study, 35 specific strategies were identified. In the second stage the strategies were developed into a questionnaire to providefindings about teachers’ratings of the usefulness of the strategies and the frequency of their use of them. A panel of experienced teachers (n¼10) evaluated the questionnaire for face validity. Furthermore, a pilot study (n¼54) in which the questionnaire form and structure was tested and adjusted before it was administered to the representative sample of elementary-school teachers. The strategies covered students’ oral activity in the classroom (8 strategies), social interaction with peers (7 strategies), whole- classroom strategies (7 strategies), and shy students’ anxiety (13 strategies). The last of these is the focus of the present study.

Participating teachers were asked to think of a particular shy student whom they had taught during their career. For the purpose of the present study, only responses from teachers who had experience in teaching a shy student are included. They rated on a four-point scale how useful they thought the strategies were in helping the anxious shy student in school and reported whether they had used these with that student. Response options were“yes”or“no.”

Measures

To attain consistency in the meaning of shyness, teachers were asked at the beginning of the questionnaire to provide answers“about shy students, that is students you think show withdrawn behavior in a way that can hinder their social and academic learning and development.”It was made explicit that they should focus on one shy student and not on shy students in general.

Contextual information

The questionnaire included items about school and class size in which the shy student was enrolled, teacher gender, age, and teaching experience (in years). Teachers indicated the selected student’s gender and grade, as well as how many years they had known that particular student (Norwegian teachers often teach the same children for all the elementary- school years). SeeTables 1and2for details.

Anxiety strategies

The 13 anxiety strategies are presented in Table 3. For each strategy, the teachers were asked: “Based on your experience, please indicate how useful you think these can be, and then whether you have used them in your work with the particular student you have in mind.” Each variable was scored for perceived usefulness on a 4-point scale from “not useful” to “very useful.” In addition, each strategy included a “Don’t know” option. The

(9)

teachers who had experience in teaching a shy child were asked whether they had used a particular strategy for the student they had in mind (“Yes/No”).

Overview of data analyses

Preliminary analyses were conducted using SPSS (version 26). Latent profile (LPA) and latent class analyses (LCA) tested whether within the sample of teachers there were identifiable sub-groups in terms of ratings of perceived usefulness on continuous variables and reported use of strategies on categorical variables. Although it is possible to combine LPA and LCA with categorical and continuous data in one model, two separate models were conducted for the present study because the two sets of variables (Perceived Usefulness and Use) are different constructs. The LPA is based on the means of the teachers’perceived usefulness (continuous indicators) and the LCA are based on the responses of teachers’use of strategies (binary indicators). Covariates (i.e., the demographic variables) were included in the analyses, which tested whether profiles of perceived usefulness and classes of strategy use of the strategies were a function of student grade, student gender and teacher experience.Figure 1displays a schematic representation of the analyses. The paths represent the multinomial logistic regression from each covariate to the latent variable. Incorporating covariates directly into the model through a multinomial logistic regression to predict group membership allows verifying the stability of the chosen model and avoids biases in the estimation of the probability of the group membership (Morin et al., 2011; Scherer et al.,2017).

The statistical package Mplus8.2 (Muthen & Muthen, 1998–2017) was used for these analyses. Maximum-likelihood estimator (MLR) corrected for potential bias due to non-normality of variables. We speciﬁed a series of models with several numbers of both latent proﬁles for Table 2. Characteristics of teacher-nominated shy students (n¼275).

Variable n %

Shy student gender Female 203 66.6

Male 72 23.6

Shy student grade 1st 25 9.1

2nd 36 13.1

3rd 39 14.2

4th 45 16.4

5th 37 13.5

6th 37 13.5

7th 56 20.4

Years known by teacher 1 year 71 25.8

2 years 104 37.8

3 years 56 20.4

4 years 35 12.7

5 years 9 3.3

(10)

Table 3. Teachers’ratings of usefulness and use of the strategies (n¼275).

Strategies Ratings of usefulness Use

M SD“Don’t know”(%) Yes (%) No (%)

1. Ask other adults during recess to follow up with the child.

2.0 1.0 36 (13.1) 200 (72.7) 75 (27.3)

2. Allow the child stay inside during recess.

.4 .7 58 (21.1) 84 (30.5) 191 (69.5)

3. Allow the child staying alone/

allow him/her to be quiet during discussions in class.

1.6 1.0 30 (10.9) 215 (78.2) 60 (21.8)

4. Allow the child not being verbally active during group work.

.8 .9 47 (17.1) 135 (49.1) 140 (50.9)

5. Meet the child outside the classroom in advance of class to prepare/remind him/her what is going to happen.

1.8 1.0 76 (27.6) 143 (52.0) 132 (48.0)

6. Arrange subtle adjustments for the child (e.g., give him/her their own written assignments; give the work plan on the desk).

1.9 1.0 75 (27.3) 153 (55.6) 122 (44.4)

7. Assess the child’s needs when making seating arrangements and ensure that he/she has a safe place to sit (e.g., next to a friend).

2.6 .7 6 (2.2) 263 (95.6) 12 (4.4)

8. Talk with the child about his/her feelings, thoughts and behavior in different situations.

2.2 .9 10 (3.6) 254 (92.4) 21 (7.6)

9. Have an arrangement with the child that an adult meets him/her at the school entrance before the school day begins.

1.6 1.2 128 (46.5) 76 (27.6) 199 (72.4)

10. Make it clear for the child that I am available to him/her during the school day.

2.3 .9 18 (6.5) 251 (91.3) 24 (8.7)

11. Give the child the opportunity to write a log/personal message to me as a teacher.

1.8 1.1 115 (41.8) 109 (39.6) 166 (60.4)

12. Talk with the child about his/her feelings about/experiences from recess.

1.9 .9 53 (19.3) 177 (64.4) 98 (35.6)

13. Have contact that is more frequent with the child’s parents than with parents to

the classmates.

2.2 .8 25 (9.1) 234 (85.1) 41 (14.9)

Note.Response options: 0¼not useful; 1¼kind of useful; 2¼quite useful; 3¼very useful.

(11)

the teachers’ rated usefulness (e.g., profiles¼c(5)) and latent classes for the teachers’ reported use (e.g., four classes¼c (4)) based on the Mplus“type¼mixture.”Changes in rela- tivefit statistics using information criteria (i.e., Akaike’s Information Criterion [AIC], Bayesian Information Criterion [BIC] and sample-size adjusted BIC [aBIC]) were subsequently exam- ined. As a thumb of rule, the lowest information criteria are generally preferred (Scherer et al.,2017). Models withkclasses mayfit better if the likelihood-ratio tests (LRT) of Vuong- Lo-Mendell-Rubin (VLMR) and Lo-Mendell-Rubin (LMR) indicate significant differences in the log-likelihood values when compared to models with k1 classes (Nylund et al., 2007).

Moreover, fewer and interpretable classes of sufﬁcient size are preferred (Morin et al.,2011).

The degree of classification certainty, namely theentropy, is useful for examining the model fit in which higher relative entropy indicates better classification of teachers in the latent classes (Morin et al.,2011; Scherer et al.,2017). An entropy value closer to 1 indicates fewer classification errors in the model, but there is no agreement regarding an exact cutoff value (Morin et al.,2011). There are arguments that an entropy value larger than .70 indicates a good classification certainty (Flunger et al., 2015), and even an entropy value larger than .60 could be sufficient (Pastor et al.,2007).

Results

Usefulness of anxiety strategies

The means and standard deviations of teachers’ratings of the strategies’usefulnessare displayed inTable 3. There was considerable variation in the responses. The highest mean rat- ing of effectiveness was for “assessing the child’s needs when making seating arrangements”with only 6 teachers responding that they did not know whether this strategy would be useful. Other strategies rated as highly effective included:“asking adults to follow up with child after recess”;“talk with child about his/her feelings”;“make clear I am available”; and “more frequent contact with parents.” The strategy rated as least effective was“allow the child stay inside during recess.”Two strategies appeared to create the most uncertainty as per their perceived usefulness: “have adult meet the child at the school entrance”and“give child opportunity to write message to teacher”attracted a high number of “Don’t know” responses. These strategies also had low frequencies of use and one hypothesis is that the uncertainty might reﬂect unfamiliarity with those strategies.

Relations between strategy usefulness ratings and demographic variables were tested with a series of MANOVAs. Results indicated a signiﬁcant large effect of school size (F¼1.55,df¼39,p¼ .03, partial eta squared¼.25). A follow-up one-way ANOVA was conducted to explore the impact of school size on teachers’ ratings of usefulness separately.

School size was divided into four groups (Group 1: < 100; Group 2: 101–300; Group 3:

301–500; Group 4:> 500). Using a Bonferroni adjusted alpha level of .004, the only difference to reach statistical difference was for“ask other adults during recess to follow up with the child”(F[3, 234]¼5.466,p¼.001). Post-hoc comparison using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for Group 1 (M¼2.57, SD ¼ .60) was signiﬁcantly higher that Group 2 (M¼2.05, SD¼ .999), Group 3 (M¼1.82, SD¼1.07), and Group 4 (M¼1.84,SD¼ .94). Thus, teachers in smallest schools gave higher ratings of the usefulness of this strategy than did teachers in the other three sizes of schools.

(12)

Latent profile analysis was applied to the mean scores of strategy usefulness. Given that there is no hypothesis about the number of groups, an initial run of 1 to 5 models was analyzed. Table 4 summarizes the evaluation criteria and shows that the two-profile solution performed significantly better than the one-profile solution, and no significant improve- ments were made when adding a third or a four profile. Even though afive-profile solution performed good interpretation, we chose the two-profile model due to the criteria that fewer and interpretable classes of sufficient size are preferred (Morin et al.,2011). Moreover, 5 groups will contribute to low group size. The classification accuracies for the two-profile solution were high (Profile 1: 94.0%; Profile 2: 96.9%).

Table 5 displays the estimated means and standard errors for the two identiﬁed proﬁles.

Profile-2 was labelled Positive Orientation toward Strategies (POS), because group-members demonstrated higher estimated mean ratings of usefulness on all 13 strategies than Profile 1, which we labelled Less Positive Orientation toward Strategies (LPOS). The difference between the two profiles was statistically significant on ten of the strategies (p <

.001). The patterns of ratings are similar in terms of rank order of strategies and the differences imply that LPOS teachers are more likely on average not to ﬁnd them as useful as the POS teachers do. For example, strategies “I am available to him/her during the school day” and “give child opportunity to write message to teacher” had low ratings among the sample as a whole—but the differences between proﬁles are large for these strategies.

Chi-square tests indicated a significant and strong association between the latent profiles—POS-teachersandLPOS-teachers—and student grade (X²[6,n¼266]¼16.81,p¼.010, V¼.25). As evident inFigure 2, the estimated probability for membership of a certain profile as a function of student grade showed that POS teachers (67.9%) had a higher probability to find the strategies most useful for shy students in the lowest grade levels. This probability decreased slightly from .78 to .60 as the students get older. The opposite pattern was found for the LPOS teachers, in which the probability for the perceived usefulness increased from .22 in Grade 1 to .40 in Grade 7.

Figure 1. Schematic presentation of the latent class and latent proﬁle analyses models with covariates.

Note. C indicates the categorical latent variable describing the latent classes for the use of the 13 strategies or the 13 perceived usefulness, YearsTaught¼Teachers experiences in years as a teacher, Sexto¼Students gender, Grade¼grade in which the students are enrolled.

(13)

Table4.Comparisonsofrelativemodelfitindicesbetweenlatentprofileanalysismodelswithuptofiveprofilesforteacherperceivedusefulness. Number ofLPLL(Npar)SCFAICBICaBICEntropyq (VLMR-LRT)q (LMR-LRT)Smallestgroupfrequency Interpretability 13813.8(26)0.96807679.57773.57691.11.000––100% 23538.0(40)1.26367156.17300.87173.90.866.007.00731.50%Good 33462.4(54)1.26597032.77228.07056.80.787.124.12720.73%Difficult 43360.0(68)1.27666856.37102.36886.70.874.575.5777.64%Difficult 53302.2(82)1,21056768.47065.06805.00.885.016.0175.09%Good Note.LP¼Latentprofiles,LL¼Loglikelihood,Npar¼Numberofparameters,SCF¼Scalingcorrectionfactor(Satorra&Bentler,2010),VLMR-LRT¼Vuong-Lo-Mendell-RubinLikelihood- Ratiotest,LMR-LRT¼Lo-Mendell-RubinLikelihood-Ratiotest.SIgnificantlevelp<.05

(14)

Use of anxiety strategies

The mean number of strategies used by individual teachers was 8.3 (SD¼2.3, n¼275). To test associations with demographic variables (i.e., student grade, student gender, teacher experience), a series of ANOVAs was conducted. Results indicated a signiﬁcant main effect only for student grade,F (6, 268)¼ 3.5, q ¼ .003, with a medium effect size (eta squared

¼.07). Post-hoc comparisons (Tukey HSD test) indicated that teachers of students in Grade 6 reported significantly fewer strategies (M¼7.03,SD¼2.7) than those of students in Grade 2 (M¼8.9, SD¼2.1), Grade 5 (M¼8.8, SD¼2.2) and Grade 7 (M¼8.9.SD¼2.2). There were no significant differences between teachers of students in Grade 1 (M¼8.5,SD¼1.9), Grade 3 (M¼8.0,SD¼2.3), and Grade 4 (M¼8.1,SD¼2.3) and they did not differ from any of the other grades. No other significant main effects or interaction effects were observed.

Table 3displays the number and proportion of teachers who reportedusingeach strategy with a particular shy student in mind. There was considerable variation in reported use. The most frequently used strategies reported by teachers were:“assess the child’s needs”(96%);

“talk with the child”(93%); and “make clear I am available”(91%). The least frequently used strategies were:“adult meets child at school entrance”(28%); and“allow child to stay inside during recess (31%).”Chi-Square tests demonstrated signiﬁcant and large effects (Cramer’s V.22) of student grade on three of the strategies:“ask other adults to follow up”(v²[6, n¼275]¼25.69, p ¼ .000, V ¼ .31); “adult meets child at school entrance” (v² [6, n¼275]¼19.84, p ¼ .003, V ¼ .27); “give child opportunity to write message to teacher” (v² [6,n¼275]¼15.51,p ¼ .017, V¼ .24). Teachers of younger students were more likely to report using the strategies “ask other adults to follow up” and “adult meets child at school entrance.” Although the strategy “give child an opportunity to write message to teacher” was infrequently used across grades, 7th Grade-teachers reported the most frequent use of it (55.4%). Only one strategy showed a signiﬁcant, albeit small effect on student gender difference: “arrange subtle adjustments for child” (v² [1,n¼275]¼5.43, p ¼ .02,phi¼.15) with more frequent use with boys (68%) than with girls (51%).

As was the case with strategy usefulness, we sought to identify different subgroups of teachers based on their reported use of the strategies using latent class analysis. Given that there was no priori hypothesis about the number of classes, initial runs of 1 to 4 classes were analyzed (see Table 6). We found significance for both a two-class and three-class solution. However, again, due to the criteria that fewer and interpretable classes of sufficient size are preferred, the two-class solution was adopted following established criteria for the optimal number of classes (Morin et al., 2011). Also, the classification accuracies were high (Class 1: 92.6%; Class 2: 88.2%). Table 7 displays the overall proportion of use in the sample along with the probabilities that teachers belonged to each of the two classes. Class 1 was labelled as Interventionist and was associated with consistently higher probabilities across the 13 strategies. Differences between the classes are marked for particular strategies. For example, there is 74% probability that the Interventionists used the strategy

“Meet the child outside the classroom in advance,”and only 17% probability that Class 2- teachers, which we labelled asNon-Interventionist,used it.

We next sought to analyze whether the demographic variables differentiated between the Interventionist and Non-Interventionist teacher groups. First, we conducted preliminary assumption testing to check for normality, linearity, univariate and multivariate outliers, the homogeneity of the variance-covariance matrix and multi-collinearity. No signiﬁcant

(15)

differences for any of the demographic variables were found that might have produced biases in the reported regression coefficients. Because the group memberships were categorical variables, logistic regression was used in each analysis, predicting group Table 5. Estimated means of the usefulness for the two identified profiles (standard errors of the means in parentheses).

M (SE) Eta squared

Variable Latent proﬁle 1

LPOS (n¼86)

Latent proﬁle 2 POS (n¼189)

t [95%C.I.]

1. Ask other adults during recess to follow up with the child.

1.14 (0.15) 2.38 (0.10) 9.10 .27 [0.95, 1,47]

0.22 (0.08) 0.46 (0.07) 1.88 .02 [0.01, 0.38]

1.46 (0.15) 1.68 (0.08) 1.67 .01 [0.04, 0.52]

0.72 (0.12) 0.78 (0.08) 0.42 .00 [0.20, 0.31]

0.85 (0.28) 2.12 (0.08) 9.12 .30 [1.02, 1.58]

1. Arrange subtle adjustments for the child

1.09 (0.16) 2.24 (0.12) 8.44 .28 [0.91, 1.47]

1. Assess the child’s needs when making seating arrangements and ensure that he/she has a safe place to sit

2.12 (0.11) 2.76 (0.06) 6.31 .13 [0.44, 0.85]

1. Talk with the child about his/

her feelings, thoughts and behavior in different situations.

1.39 (0.23) 2.56 (0.05) 10.24 .29 [0.95, 1.40]

1. Have an arrangement with the child that an adult meets him/

her at the school entrance

0.27 (0.10) 2.07 (0.18) 14.04 .58 [1.53, 2.03]

1.49 (0.18) 2.66 (0.06) 11.03 .33 [0.97, 1.39]

0.85 (0.14) 2.16 (0.14) 9.25 .38 [1.09, 1.68]

1. Talk with the child about his/

her feelings about/experiences from recess.

1.00 (0.22) 2.24 (0.07) 12.41 .42 [1.08, 1.49]

the classmates.

1.70 (0.15) 2.45 (0.06) 7.18 .18 [0.54, 0.94]

(16)

membership from the demographic variables.Table 8demonstrates the resultant coefficients of membership to the Interventionist latent class. Positive relations with the demographic variables would indicate increased probability of being a member of the Interventionist class, whereas negative relations would indicate decreased probability. Results indicated a significant effect only for student grade. Furthermore, Chi-square tests demonstrated a significant, large effect of student grade on class membership for strategies use (X²[6,n¼266]¼23.69,p

¼.001,V¼.30). The estimated probabilities for belonging to either the Interventionist group or the Non-Interventionists as a function of student grade showed the same pattern (see Figure 3). That is, the Interventionists (58.2%) had a higher probability of using the anxiety strategies for younger students, and the Non-Interventionists (41.2%) had a lower probability of using them for younger than older students.

Relations between strategy use and strategy perceived usefulness

Finally, across the sample of teachers, high ratings of efﬁcacy are associated with more frequent use (X² with Yates Continuity Correction [1, n¼266]¼21.46, p < .001, phi¼ .30).

Moreover, significant correlations were found between those teachers classified as Interventionists and those classified as POS (r ¼ .39, p < .001). Also, the two groups of Non-Interventionists teachers and the LPOS teachers correlated significantly (r ¼ .36, p <

.001). Interventionist teachers tend to think that their strategies are more effective and use them more frequently. Theseﬁndings are suggestive of the construct validity for the distinc- tion between types of teachers.

Discussion

The principal aim of the study was to investigate the frequencies of teachers’use of strategies for managing the anxiety of shy elementary-school students and the teachers’ratings Figure 2.. Estimated probabilities for the latent useful variable as a function of student grade.

(17)

Table6.Comparisonsofrelativemodelﬁtindicesbetweenlatentclassanalysismodelswithuptofourclassesoftheusedstrategies. Number ofLCLL(Npar)SCFAICBICaBICEntropyP(VLMR-LRT)P(LMR-LRT)

Smallestgroup frequency(n) Interpretability 11891.1(13)1.00003808.2443855.2623814.042–––100%(275) 21788.1(27)1.09133630.1853727.8383642.2260.694.0000.000138.2%(105)Good 31754.7(41)1.07743591.7323610.0163610.0160.698.0104.011126.9%(74)Good 41731.5(55)1.05523573.0083771.9303597.5360.715.0507.053019.3%(53)Difﬁcult Note.LC¼Latentclasses,LL¼Loglikelihood,Npar¼Numberofparameters,SCF¼Scalingcorrectionfactor(Satorra&Bentler,2010),VLMR-LRT¼Vuong-Lo-Mendell-RubinLikelihood- Ratiotest,LMR-LRT¼Lo-Mendell-RubinLikelihood-Ratiotest.Signiﬁcantlevelp<.05.

(18)

of the usefulness of these strategies. Hypotheses about the potential influence of students’ grade, students’gender, and teacher experience on strategies were tested. We investigated whether there might be systematic variation among teachers in frequencies of use and in ratings that would result in the identification of different profiles of teachers.

On average, teachers reported using 8.3 of the 13 strategies included in the questionnaire:

Thus, the teachers appear to have access to a repertoire of strategies to help their shy students with their anxiety. Each strategy was used by at least 76 respondents to the questionnaire (28% of the sample), implying that teachers participating in the ﬁrst stage of the study had not produced idiosyncratic strategies.

Nevertheless, there was considerable variation in both reported frequencies of use of the strategies and in ratings of usefulness. There were signiﬁcant differences due to student grade in mean number of strategies used by teachers and in use of three of the strategies.

Teachers of younger students were more likely to report using the strategies relating to an adult following up after recess and an adult meeting child at the school entrance. Although the strategy “give child opportunity to write message to teacher” was infrequently used across grades, 7th Grade-teachers reported most frequently using it. Student grade differences were also obtained in the latent class analysis applied to frequency of use data and the latent profile analysis applied to ratings of usefulness data. A student gender difference was found on one strategy: arranging subtle differences for the student was more likely to be used for boys. We had no hypotheses about school size, but there was one significant difference, asking other adults during recess to follow up with the child was rated most useful in the smallest schools. Latent class analysis identified two groupings of teachers and was identified as differences in the frequencies of use of strategies rather than differences in the patterns of use. Inspection of the estimated probabilities for the latent use variable as a function of student grade shows that the differences between the two classes are marked at the three youngest student grade levels. Latent profile analysis applied to ratings of usefulness of strategies also produced two groupings, which differ on how efficacious teachers rated the set of strategies; differences between groups were in magnitude of means of ratings rather than in patterns of ratings in which the teachers with a more positive orientation toward the strategies found the strategies useful for shy students across all grades.

Use and usefulness of strategies

The most frequently used strategies, according to the teachers’reports involved assessing the student’s needs when making seating arrangements, talking with the student about his or her feelings and behavior, and making it clear that the teacher was available for the student. The strategy referring to seating arrangements was almost universally endorsed and claimed to be used by nearly all the sample (with 92 percent of ratings in the highest two categories of ratings of usefulness). The strategies least often used referred to an adult meeting the student at the beginning of the school day and allowing the student to stay in during recess. This last strategy was rated least useful of all the strategies along with the strategy referring to allowing the child to remain quiet during classroom discussions. The questionnaire referred to use and usefulness in terms of managing the shy student’s anxiety. Prior research has shown that anxiety is one of the areas that teachers identify as a problem for shy students (Mjelve et al., 2019)).

(19)

Previous research into teachers’interventions to help shy students has identiﬁed teachers’ social-learning strategies aimed at promoting social skills including increasing shy students’ participation in the classroom in terms of speaking up in class and working collaboratively Table 7. Proportions of overall strategies use and proportions of probabilities for the two identiﬁed classes of used strategies.

Two-class solution

Strategies

Overall proportion of use (N¼275)

Class 1 (n¼170) Interventionist

Class 2 (n¼105) Non-interventionist 1. Ask other adults during recess to

follow up with the child.

.73 .91 .43

.31 .41 .15

.78 .78 .79

.49 .51 .46

.52 .74 .17

6. Arrange subtle adjustments for the child

.56 .72 .30

7. Assess the child’s needs when making seating arrangements and ensure that he/she has a safe place to sit

.96 .98 .93

8. Talk with the child about his/her feelings, thoughts and behavior in different situations.

.92 .98 .83

9. Have an arrangement with the child that an adult meets him/her at the school entrance

.28 .43 .03

.91 .99 .79

.40 .45 .30

12. Talk with the child about his/her feelings about/experiences from recess.

.64 .77 .44

the classmates.

.85 .97 .66

(20)

with their peers (Bosacki et al., 2014; Brophy & Bohrkemper, 1989; Deng et al., 2017).

Research has also shown that teachers are less likely to use“high powered”strategies, such as punishment and direct intervention for problem behaviors, with shy students (Brophy &

Bohrkemper, 1989; Deng et al., 2017). Little attention has been paid to teachers’ speciﬁc strategies targeted at students’anxiety despite substantial evidence that childhood shyness is associated with anxiety and can be a precursor of internalizing difﬁculties (Rubin et al., 2009). Teachers in an interview study conducted by Bosacki et al. (2014, p. 257) emphasized creating an atmosphere of trust in the classroom to create a “safe place” in which a shy child can speak up. A similar approach is evident in Coplan et al.’s (2020) description of parent-child relationships that enable a child to develop an “internal working model of felt security.”Creating such a model in the classroom can help reduce the anxiety that inhibits shy students’contributions, reticence that in turn can increase their anxiety.

The theme of safety is evident in the strategies endorsed in this study. The most frequently used strategy can be decomposed into two elements—making seating arrangements by careful choice of student to sit beside, and ensuring that the shy child has a

“safe place to sit.” Other strategies—allowing the child to be quiet during classroom discussions and during group work and allowing him or her to remain indoors during recess are also instances of protecting the child. Teachers reported using these strategies, although the final two received low ratings of usefulness. Thus, there is reliance on protective strategies or, in clinical terminology,“safety behaviors”(Gray et al., 2019). Although these can help a child cope with his or her anxiety in the short term, they can be less productive in the longer term. It can impede the development of more effective coping strategies and reduces opportunities to practice social skills that can increase self-confidence and thereby reduce fears. Although these strategies might have temporary value, particularly when the child is in a new class or with an unfamiliar teacher, they run the risks of reinforcing the child’s reticence and having the child miss out on the positive feelings of self-confidence that can ensue from a contribution that is praised by the teacher or appre- ciated by peers.

Another theme in the strategies is focus on teacher interaction with the individual shy student, such as talking with the child about his and her feelings, thoughts and behavior in class and during recess. These offer the teacher the opportunity to gain insight into the particular student’s shyness and the difﬁculties it causes, an approach recommended by teachers in the Bosacki et al. (2014) interview study, and which is consistent with cognitive approaches to managing social anxiety (Leigh & Clark,2018). It is important to take the student’s perspective into account when selecting strategies and when adjusting them in the light of experience.

The problem areas identified by teachers included pre-school time and recess time, areas where Asendorpf and Meier (1993) observational study found that shy students were most reticent; shy children are not only silent in the classroom. The use of strategies targeted at these parts of the school day suggests that teachers are aware that shy students have ongoing difficulties in their social interactions with their peers in informal settings, difficulties that impact upon their learning. Teachers did find it useful to follow up the student during recess whereas allowing them to avoid recess, although used by 30 per cent of teachers, was given low ratings of usefulness. The latter is an example of overprotection.

(21)

Correlates of use and usefulness of strategies Grade differences

There are differences in reported strategy use and ratings of usefulness associated with student grade. Prior research suggested that children’s age, associated with grade level, might be a potential influence on teachers’ choice of strategies. There were significant effects associated with student grade. Two strategies were most frequently used with the youngest children: an adult following up after recess; and an adult meeting child at the school entrance. These are situations outside the classroom and have been shown to be problem- atic for shy children (Asendorpf & Meier,1993) and it may be that teachers believe that the youngest children are most vulnerable in these settings. Younger children may also be most anxious about attending school or separating from the parent or caregiver, so a famil- iar face at the school gate would be particularly reassuring. Teachers of 7th grade (i.e., the oldest children) reported most use of giving the student the opportunity to write a message to the teacher it, which may only be appropriate for older students. Regression analysis of the frequency of use data predicting latent class membership yielded a significant result for grade level. A plot of probability of latent class membership against grades suggests that the two classes are most distinct at the earliest grades, the youngest students in the sample. The more interventionist teachers are most interventionist during the earliest years of elementary school. Future research might investigate whether the difficulties of shy children are more conspicuous in those years, interventionist teachers are more sensitive to these difficulties, or believe that children at that age more amenable to intervention.

Variation related to grade might reﬂect differences in teaching methods and classroom management as well as age-related changes in the nature of shyness, and future research might attempt to tease out these factors.

Gender differences

Student gender was not associated with significant differences in the use of strategies or ratings of their usefulness, apart from a single strategy where arranging subtle differences Table 8. Unstandardized regression coefficients of membership in latent class 1 on predictors following the simultaneous modelling approach for the use of the strategies (based on the two-profile solution).

Predictor variables B (SE) OR¼Exp (B)

Teacher gender 0.13 (0.42) 0.88

Teacher age 0.05 (0.20) 0.95

Number of years teacher worked as a teacher

0.32 (0.26) 1.38

School size 0.21 (0.24) 0.81

Class size 0.05 (0.62) 0.95

Student gender 0.04 (0.38) 1.04

Student grade 0.19 (0.09) 0.83

Note. n¼266. Due to missing values in all covariates, the data of 9 teachers were excluded from these analyses.

OR¼Odds ratio.

p<.05.

(22)

for an individual shy student was more likely to be used for boys. The absence of gender differences is consistent with evidence that teachers do not hold different attitudes about shy boys and shy girls (Doey et al., 2014). There was a gender imbalance in the teachers’ selection of shy students, 67 per cent of whom are female. This makes it difﬁcult to general- ize about gender differences and it raises the issue of whether teachers are more likely to identify girls as shy. This is complicated by the gender imbalance in the sample of teachers (80 percent female). This imbalance reﬂects the demographics of elementary schools in Norway (75 percent female; Skoleporten, 2020) and more widely (for example, US data report 89 per cent female; National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). It is possible to adopt a design involving random assignment of gender of target students rated by teachers. This study preferred a more realistic approach where experienced teachers reported their strategies when working with actual students.

Teacher groupings

Overall, teacher or school characteristics seem to have little influence on teacher groups either of strategy use or of ratings of their usefulness. It is difficult to place these findings in the context of previous research into strategy use since studies have not incorporated these factors in their design rather than on qualitative differences. The pattern of variation across the 13 strategies is similar in both groups apart from being uniformly elevated in the Figure 3.. Estimated probabilities for the latent use variable as a function of student grade.