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ACADEMIC MASKING

THE TRY-HARD CONFLICT

A STUDY OF……

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    • Students often intentionally lower their effort to avoid being called a try-hard.

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    • There is a social pressure to underperform, so you don’t stand out or make others feel any less.

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Do we hide our real potential???

The question is….

    • Does this behavior of withholding effort follow a normal distribution?

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Sample size: 300 Pebblebrook students

Systematic Random Sampling : 5th person

Self reported masking on a scale of 1 to 10

Data collection process

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    • Mean: 5.11
    • Standard Deviation: 2.59

Visualizing the Academic “Masking”

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*Z = 10 -5.11/2.59 =-1.89

A 10 represents a student who withholds effort to ignore being having a social label or feeling like they’re not as smart as others.

The student is is 1.89 standard deviations away from the average .

Z-Score and the Reasoning

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The connections

    • 50% of students feel a physical stress response when they are forced to show their true ability .
    • The Autonomic Nervous System reacts to fear and in this case social rejection.
    • A spatial behavior
    • My observation: Students choose seats to physically distance themselves from big engagement zones in the front of the room.
    • Students “map” out their environment and see where or when they should hide effort levels from others.

Human Geography

(Source: Meisenburg, 2024)

Biology

(Source: Thompson, 2023)

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    • The 95% confidence interval is 4.82 to 5.40
    • The Reality: The average student is consistently downplaying their intelligence to get through social levels.

The final inference

So what???..

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    • My strategy: Try separating “doing the work” from “being seen doing the work”.
    • Go for anonymous tools for participation (Ex: Nearpod, polls, individual whiteboards, and etc).
    • The outcome of this removes the stress and struggles and allows students to show their full academic potential.

“Breaking the mask” (the solution)

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    • Meisenberg, G. (2024). Social Signaling and the Cost of Academic Effort in Secondary Education. Journal of Educational Sociology.

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    • Thompson, L. R. (2023). The Biology of Social Anxiety: Understanding the Fight or Flight Response in Classrooms.Clinical Adolescent Psychology Review.

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    • ZipDo. (2024). Essential Student Stress Statistics in 2024. ZipDo Industry Reports.

Refrences