Comparing the Effectiveness of Wells' Meta-cognition Training with Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Training on Academic Procrastination of Students with Math Anxiety

Abstract

Background and Aim: Math anxiety is a widespread problem for all ages worldwide; In international assessments and based on studies of international planning of students, most teenagers have reported anxiety and tension in math classes and when doing math exercises; Therefore, the present study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of Wales' metacognition training with Kabat Zain's mindfulness training on academic procrastination of students with math anxiety. Methods: In this research, a quasi-experimental research method of pre-test and post-test design was used with two experimental groups and one control group; The statistical population of this research includes all female students in the second year of high school in the 6th district of Tehran in the academic year 2021-2022. 45 people who met the criteria for entering the research were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling method and were randomly and equally divided into two experimental groups and one control group. The first experimental group underwent Wales metacognition training in 8 sessions of 60 minutes, and the second experimental group underwent mindfulness training in 8 sessions of 120 minutes, and the control group remained waiting without any intervention during this time. The research tools include Pleck and Parker's math anxiety questionnaire (1982) and Solman and Rothbloom's academic procrastination scale (1984). The data analysis of this research was done in two parts: descriptive (central and dispersion indices, skewness and kurtosis) and inferential (MANCOVA) using SPSS-23 software. Results: The results showed that both Wales metacognition training and Kabat-Zinn mindfulness training are effective on the academic procrastination of students with math anxiety. Also, the results indicated that these two treatments are effective on the academic procrastination of students with math anxiety. Conclusion: The results showed that the effectiveness of Kabat-Zinn mindfulness therapy on academic procrastination and its subscales is more than that of Wales' metacognitive therapy.