Easing anxiety for adults in higher education: Regaining self within subversive, interdisciplinary bibliotherapy, and visual journaling

ABSTRACT

Anxiety was viewed as a normative part of life. Since the onset of COVID-19, the view of anxiety has moved from being a normative part of life to being a victimizing condition. Literacy and anxiety are not separated within bibliotherapy. To reduce student anxiety, it is instigated a dialogic interaction between visual journals with university literacy courses in reading as a life act. Students were not saying they were "anxious" about an event that would pass;their "being" was being labelled as anxiety. In recognizing this, the chapter sets out to counter stress triggers by providing students with a sense of voice, self-identity, and small-group and whole-class conversations. The instructional design involved some guiding questions woven with themes of teacher modelling and guidance, visual journaling (VJ), dialogic discourse, and bibliotherapy. Ideas for deeper thinking were consistently included in the weekly VJs prior to class, so pre-thinking time was built into the response. The VJ will be a weekly instructional device and will also be used creatively as a reflective mirror for learning and thought they have reflected upon from assigned readings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)