Math Anxiety at the University: What Forms of Teaching and Learning Statistics in Higher Education Can Help Students With Math Anxiety?

Pär Bjälkebring

doi:10.3389/feduc.2019.00030

Abstract

Math anxiety is a feeling of tension, worry, and/or fear in situations involving math-related activities. The relationship between Math anxiety and math cognition has been frequently studied, and the negative associations between the two have been observed at multiple levels of mathematical processing ranging from simple counting to complex math problems. These negative associations are evident across various developmental stages. The aim of this study is to identify teaching and learning methods in higher education that students high in math anxiety use and benefit from. Through an anonymous online survey, psychology students enrolled in a statistics course rated their Math anxiety, Subjective numeracy, and Objective numeracy; in addition, they rated their success in the statistics course and their general preference for different forms of learning (e.g., face to face learning, online course material, as well as the use of the online video material presented on University of Gothenburg's learning management system [GUL]). The results gave no support to the notion that students high in Math anxiety used online teaching tools more than other students. However, students high in Math anxiety said they used their classmates as help to pass the course to a greater extent compared to those lower in Math anxiety.

Highlights

Stress and anxiety has been identified as one of the major challenges in introductory statistics on the undergraduate level (Bradstreet, 1996)
Even though math anxiety is negatively correlated with math ability, a person with high math anxiety can be great at math, and a person without any math anxiety can be bad at math
The aim of this study is to identify teaching and learning methods in higher education that students high in math anxiety use and benefit from

Summary

Introduction

Stress and anxiety has been identified as one of the major challenges in introductory statistics on the undergraduate level (Bradstreet, 1996). This can pressure students, especially those with low math self-efficacy, considerably (depending on how well student learning is supported), reduce their selfefficacy, and interfere with learning (Betz, 1978). Negatively influence math ability through several different pathways, for example working memory when performing math problems (Skagerlund et al, 2019). Math anxiety is related to many math related constructs such as math self-efficacy, it is separate from the person’s actual math ability (Peters and Bjalkebring, 2015). Even though math anxiety is negatively correlated with math ability, a person with high math anxiety can be great at math, and a person without any math anxiety can be bad at math (for overview see Dowker et al, 2016)

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion