Abstract

In the year 2013, Republic Act No. 10533, otherwise known as the K-12 curriculum was implemented in the Philippines. With this law, Senior High School was introduced, wherein two years were added to secondary education. In line with this, students choose their specialization track based on their strengths, interest, and career assessment exams. Despite this fact, the issue of academic failure is still present and as a result, stress among student occurs. Academic performance is affected by this stress. The researchers aimed to discover the coping strategies of a Grade 11 Stem student who failed in Pre-Calculus, a specialized subject of her chosen strand. Six participants were involved in this study. Through criterion sampling, the failing student was identified and the rest were chosen through purposeful sampling. To conduct this study, letters of permission and waivers were handed to concerned individuals. Upon approval of permission, 30-minute to one-hour recorded interviews were held. Through Thematic Analysis, data gathered were transcribed, coded, and analyzed. From the themes, identified factors of failure were culture shock, personality, and lack of motivation. The discovered coping strategy of the failing student was instrumental support and it can be deemed effective as supported by the positive changes and improvements that follow after she had done it.