Session Information
24 SES 04, Patterns of Goal Orientations and Anxiety
Paper Session
Contribution
Children vary in their attitudes towards mathematics with those children who experience feelings of tension, discomfort or fear surrounding mathematics being referred to as having mathematics anxiety (Ashcraft & Faust, 1994). Mathematics anxiety has been associated with several negative consequences. Not only is there is a robust albeit small negative relationship with attainment in mathematics (Carey, Hill, Devine, & Szucs, 2016; Hembree, 1990), there are indirect influences on our ability to achieve success as those with higher levels of mathematics anxiety are, regardless of their actual mathematics abilities, less likely to pursue mathematics-related courses and therefore fail to obtain the qualifications which could aid their future careers (Hembree, 1990; Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990). Research on other forms of anxiety has made links to sleep problems (Mullin et al., 2017), reduced emotional functioning (Kahn, Sheppes, & Sadeh, 2013) and behavioural regulation (Paavonen et al., 2009), and other research has linked anxiety to pessimism and lower levels of optimism (Ey et al., 2005), poorer self-esteem (Fischer & Leitenberg, 1986), and self-efficacy (Galla & Wood, 2012). Although mathematics anxiety has been clearly delineated from other forms of anxiety (Hembree, 1990), similar relationships are beginning to be established. Thus, mathematics anxiety is both a personal wellbeing issue and a societal concern.
It could be argued that mathematics anxiety has been well characterised at this stage, with publications spanning a 60 year period (Dowker, Sarkar, & Looi, 2016). However, qualitative research regarding individual experiences and perceptions of mathematics anxiety is sparse. A recent review of accounts of mathematics learning in general, rather than mathematics anxiety specifically, and including all ages of participants from school children to adults only unearthed 34 relevant publications over the past 40 years with only 4 of these focusing on school-aged children (Towers, Hall, Rapke, Martin, & Andrews, 2017). Furthermore, even when this type of research specifically focuses on mathematics anxiety, it usually reflects the views of adults rather than children, frequently focusing on university students and in particular pre-service teachers. Recent quantitative research has established that children as young as six-years-old experience mathematics anxiety (Harari, Vukovic, & Bailey, 2013) but none of the studies in the Towers review focussed on mathematics anxiety specifically in children this young in primary schooling.
Primary-school-aged children are an important group to hear from. Firstly, they are temporally closest to early anxiogenic factors. Asking an adult about their experiences of learning mathematics is likely to generate a response biased by later life experiences or knowledge (Uhlenhuth, Haberman, Balter, & Lipman, 1977). Young children, on the other hand, are still experiencing the factors which engender early anxiety towards mathematics, and may be best placed to describe these without bias, as the student voice literature has demonstrated that children are expert witnesses on their learning and can reliably report on this (Flutter & Rudduck, 2004). Secondly, younger age groups are the best target to receive interventions before they become mathematics anxious, as if mathematics anxiety is reduced such children are less likely to avoid mathematics as they grow into adults and their performance is much less likely to have irrevocably suffered (Hembree, 1990).
This paper, therefore, aims to address the gap in knowledge pertaining to the experiences of mathematics anxiety in primary-school-aged children from the perspective of the young people themselves. Children known to suffer from mathematics anxiety will be compared with those who do not, to further characterise mathematics anxiety.
Method
This paper draws data from a mixed-methods two-phase longitudinal study on the origins and experiences of mathematics anxiety in primary and secondary pupils in the UK, which has involved 845 primary pupils across 19 schools. Data pertinent to this paper came from Phase 2. Mathematics anxiety scores on the modified Abbreviated Maths Anxiety Rating Scale (mAMAS) in Phase 1 (Carey, Hill, Devine, & Szűcs, 2017) were used to select participants. This is a 9-item self-report questionnaire, which asks participants to rate their anxiety in various maths-related situations using a 5-point Likert scale. The highly mathematics anxious group comprised the 37 children (4.4% of the sample) who scored 25 or more on the scale, as our previous research established this cut-off for identifying mathematics anxiety. The comparison group consisted of 35 children drawn randomly from the rest of the sample. mAMAS was re-administered during Phase 2 to establish whether mathematics anxiety was a stable or transient state. Consequently 4 different groups of children could be identified: stable mathematics anxiety (MAs, N=22, 13 girls and 9 boys), transitioned to develop mathematics anxiety (MAt, N=10, 2 girls and 8 boys), transient mathematics anxiety that didn’t last (NMAt, N=15, 11 girls and 4 boys), and stably not mathematics anxious (NMAs, N=25, 11 girls and 14 boys). We conducted two semi-structured interviews, approximately three weeks apart and asked children to keep a diary of their experiences in mathematics lessons in the intervening period. The first interview elicited more straightforward information whilst the second probed more deeply into children’s mathematics experiences, prompted by the diary entries. This diary prompted students to write down any memorable experiences during their maths learning, whether positive or negative, asking students to describe: the event they experienced; how it made them feel, and if and what they did anything to make themselves feel better if it was negative. Over the two interviews, a range of topics based on the extant literature on the experience and correlates of mathematics anxiety were explored including (but not limited to): the role of gender in experience of mathematics, the role of pedagogy in student experiences, different mindsets about ability to improve in mathematics, the social element of mathematics and performance in class and tests and the consequences that anxiety and other negative feelings might have on behaviour. Data was analysed thematically broadly following the protocol outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006).
Expected Outcomes
We were interested in knowing whether mathematics anxious children (MAs or MAt) reported a different set of experiences of mathematics lessons to those who didn’t exhibit any signs of mathematics anxiety at the time of the interviews (i.e. NMAs or NMAt). The findings point to a clear difference in the experiences reported between these two groups of children. The pattern of response to the general question of liking of mathematics relative to other subjects and the follow up about how they feel about mathematics lessons was quite distinct. 18 of the 33 children who were not mathematics anxious indicated they felt positively about mathematics, 12 expressed more ambivalent feelings being positive some of the time and 3 expressed negative feelings about their experience of mathematics as a whole. This contrasted with only 5 of the 32 children who were mathematics anxious expressing positive feelings to mathematics, 15 being more ambivalent and 12 revealing uniformly negative feelings. However, as might be expected, many children’s feelings were multi-layered and contextualised. When the data were interrogated further, exploring feelings associated with common classroom situations such as being asked to answer a question in class, the nature of the different experiences of children with mathematics anxiety compared to those without became more apparent. Children’s comments on how they felt in different classroom situations and in relation to specific aspects of mathematics revealed a contrasting pattern of feelings, thoughts and physical manifestations for the mathematics anxious and those that were not. As many of the aspects highlighted are things that can be tackled in the classroom by a knowledgeable and empathic teacher, this study starts to provide some ideas for how practitioners and other educational stakeholders can change practice to enable all our youngsters to fulfil their potential in mathematics.
References
Ashcraft, M. H., & Faust, M. W. (1994). Mathematics anxiety and mental arithmetic performance: An exploratory investigation. Cognition & Emotion, 8(2), 97-125. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. Carey, E., Hill, F., Devine, A., & Szucs, D. (2016). The chicken or the egg? The direction of the relationship between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(1987). Carey, E., Hill, F., Devine, A., & Szűcs, D. (2017). The Modified Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale : A Valid and Reliable Instrument for Use with Children. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(January), 1-13. Dowker, A., Sarkar, A., & Looi, C. Y. (2016). Mathematics anxiety: What have we learned in 60 years? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 508. Flutter, J., & Rudduck, J. (2004). Consulting Pupils: What's in It for Schools? London: RoutledgeFalmer. Galla, B. M., & Wood, J. J. (2012). Emotional self-efficacy moderates anxiety-related impairments in math performance in elementary school-age youth. Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 118-122. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.09.012 Harari, R. R., Vukovic, R. K., & Bailey, S. P. (2013). Mathematics Anxiety in Young Children: An Exploratory Study. The Journal of Experimental Education, 81(4), 538-555. doi:10.1080/00220973.2012.727888 Hembree, R. (1990). The nature, effects and relief of mathematics anxiety. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 21(1), 33-46. Meece, J. L., Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (1990). Predictors of math anxiety and its influence on young adolescents’ course enrollment intentions and performance in mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 60-70. Mullin, B., Pyle, L., Haraden, D., Riederer, J., Brim, N., Kaplan, D., & Novins, D. (2017). A preliminary multimethod comparison of sleep among adolescents with and without generalized anxiety disorder. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 46(2), 198-210. doi:10.1080/15374416.2016.1220312 Paavonen, E. J., Räikkönen, K., Lahti, J., Komsi, N., Heinonen, K., Pesonen, A.-K., . . . Porkka-Heiskanen, T. (2009). Short sleep duration and behavioral symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in healthy 7- to 8-year-old children. Pediatrics, 123(5), 857-864. doi:10.1542/peds.2008-2164 Towers, J., Hall, J., Rapke, T., Martin, L. C., & Andrews, H. (2017). Autobiographical Accounts of Students' Experiences Learning Mathematics: A Review. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 17(3), 152-164. doi:10.1080/14926156.2016.1241453 Uhlenhuth, E. H., Haberman, S. J., Balter, M. D., & Lipman, R. S. (1977). Remembering Life Events. In J. Strauss (Ed.), The Origins and Course of Psychopathology (pp. 117-134). Boston, MA: Springer US.
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