Published Paper Details:

Now society is giving much importance to achievement in various spheres which in turn throws the students into a world of stress. In this pandemic period everybody finds stress everywhere, whether it be within the family, school/educational environments, or any other social or economic sector. Students today are facing new challenges in education calling for greater effort to be put into them. Also, society demands students to perform various roles, which are unspecific and undefined, inconsistent and unachievable in the present socio-cultural, economic, and bureaucratic contexts of our society, causing heavy stress on students mainly from higher secondary schools. In the present study, the investigator made an attempt to find out the relationship between academic stress and peer pressure in the context of online learning of higher secondary school students. The study is conducted on 198 students studying in government and aided higher secondary schools in Kerala. Data required for the present study were collected through a survey. The standardized tools used for the study are the Scale of Academic Stress in the context of online learning (Bindu 2020) and the Scale of Peer Pressure in the context of online learning (Joy and Bindu 2020). The study found that there is a significant positive correlation between academic stress and peer pressure of higher secondary school students in the context of online learning. The reasons behind academic stress and peer pressure need to be identified and support to students may be provided when they are in need in the form of guidance and counseling. If needed academic scaffolding is also to be provided. The teachers should also be provided with sufficient in-service training to understand the problems of higher secondary school students during online teaching.