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Math Anxiety

Introduction

Richardson and Suinn (1972) defined math anxiety as “feelings of tension and

anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical

problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations” (p. 551). This is not

to be confused with test anxiety. While math anxiety can be present during a test, it

also encompasses all mathematical tasks that bring about feelings of anxiety including

but not limited to homework, group work, and solving problems as a whole class.

Technology such as music, meditation apps, and math sites can aid in lowering math

anxiety in both students and adults.

Beilock and Willingham (2014) state that the United States has “an estimated

25% of 4-year college students and up to 80% of community college students suffer

from a moderate to high degree of math anxiety” (p. 29). They also note that math

anxiety is “not limited to a minority of individuals nor to one country” meaning that this is

an international problem (p. 29). This hinders adults trying to obtain certain degrees

and can eventually affect their own child’s math anxiety. Allowing math anxiety to

manifest itself from childhood into adulthood creates a cycle within families that seems

almost impossible to break.

How it Manifests

Math anxiety manifests itself during the early years of mandatory education.

Several studies discuss that math anxiety can present itself as early as first or second

grade then continue throughout all of a student’s academic career. For example, Kulkin
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(2016) reflected on her tutoring with students who struggle with math and how she was

not addressing how students felt about math. She decided to give her fourth through

sixth grade students a survey that contained statements about math and they answered

on a scale of one to five on how much they agreed or disagreed on that statement.

A majority of her students agree with the statement that math made them

stressed and disagreed with math being exciting, or enjoyable to solve problems with

others students. Kulkin (2016) even had a few students comment that math “burns like

lava” or “is scary like a movie” (p. 30). This is not an uncommon sentiment. Many

students develop opinions about math as they progress in school. However, these

negative feelings students develop about math not only continue on with them

throughout school but it also hinders their achievement in mathematic tasks and

classes.

Cheema and Sheridan (2015) hypothesized that there was a negative

relationship between math anxiety and math achievement, and a positive relationship

between time spent doing homework and math achievement. A survey “that measures

anxiety specifically due to maths homework, and amount of time spent on homework

simultaneously as predictors of maths achievement” (p. 248) was distributed to close to

five thousand high school students across the U.S. to test their theory. The author's

hypothesis was supported and they also noted that increasing the amount of time spent

on homework can counter the negative effects of anxiety on achievement. These

students may need extra help to be successful on their homework so educational

websites that show students the process are more useful to help counter negative

feelings of math anxiety.

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There are several math sites such as Khan Academy, Freckle, and Dreambox

that teachers can have students use. These sites are fun for the students to engage

with for practicing math. All three of these sites also have tools to help students. Khan

Academy has videos for students to watch that go step by step through the problem

solving process and Freckle and Dreambox automatically differentiate the level of

difficulty or change to a new standard depending on how many correct or incorrect

questions students solve. Freckle and Dreambox are sites that look and act like a game

while allowing students to practice math. This makes the website fun to go to but also

allows the student to have a little challenge while practicing math and still having

success by being able to solve the problems. Khan Academy is different. They have

video lessons, practice problems, and quizzes to guide students learning. Students

may feel more nervous about using Khan Academy than Dreambox or Freckle because

the website is structured more like state testing but with additional resources students

can use. Without addressing these attitudes or feelings of math anxiety, students will

continue to experience these negative feelings toward math throughout school and into

adulthood.

Implications for College Students

What was true for students who developed math anxiety throughout their

education remains true in a higher educational setting. Núñez-Peña, Suárez-Pellicioni,

and Bono (2013) studied almost 200 pyschology major students from the University of

Barcelona that were enrolled in the Research Design course. Their study supported

that math anxiety and negative attitudes toward math did affect some students’
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performance. The authors mentioned that students who failed this course had higher

levels of math anxiety and more negative feelings toward math than those students that

passed the course. This hypothesis is supported with several other studies.

Ashcraft and Moore (2009) insist that there are many correlations between math

anxiety and negative feelings about math and achievement in math courses for college

students. They summarize that “the higher one’s level of math anxiety, the lower one’s

score is on math achievement tests.” (p. 200). This shows a negative correlation

between math anxiety and test score. Ashcraft and Moore (2009), and Núñez-Peña,

Suárez-Pellicioni, and Bono (2013) both note the correlation between math anxiety and

achievement in math courses.

The lack of achievement in math leads to avoiding more math courses and even

influences a person’s decision of their college major depending on the amount of math

required to achieve that degree. The big difference between the first 13 years of public

education and higher education is that adults have the opportunity to avoid taking math

courses depending on the degree they chose. College students who avoid math limit

their possibilities for degrees which in turn limits their future career prospects. Adults

with math anxiety will avoid degrees such as engineering, architecture, computer

science, economics, biology, and accounting. Adults with math anxiety could chose a

degree in college that they are not completely invested in or want to build a future

career in because it only requires one or two math courses that are low level math

courses.

Depending on what level of mathematics is required by the college or degree,

Khan Academy does offer some help on advanced courses such as calculus and
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statistics but generally only offers descriptive videos through math classes available

throughout high school. While there is less academic support online for college

students, there are many different meditation and mindfulness apps that can help

students become aware of their feelings and keep themselves calm. Mindfulness Daily,

Calm, Headspace: Meditation, and Aura: Calm Anxiety and Sleep are all free apps that

you can download from the app store.

Music can also affect practice. Hallam, Price and Katsarou (2002) did a study on

the effects of mood calming music on math problems. They found that listening to

background music could increase the number of arithmetic problems students finished.

Hallam, Price and Katsarou (2002) discuss the impact of calming, relaxing music on

performance tasks that can create an optimum environment for learning with

appropriately selected music. Music that is pleasant but not distracting is what would be

the most effective such as listening to instrumental music or the sounds of nature while

working on math to create a calm atmosphere to work. However, it tends to be much

more difficult for adults when their children reach out for help on math.

Parental Factors

Parents are the first role models that children have when they are growing up.

Parents teach their children how to talk, try new food, be honest, play games, and begin

to teach them about school topics. Many studies have shown a direct correlation

between positive experiences of reading to a child every night and the child’s ability to

learn how to read apart from an educational setting. However this is not often true of

math.
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Soni and Kumari (2017) created a study that was conducted in India on the

connection of parental math anxiety and attitudes, and how that would impact their

student’s math achievement. Their study did support their hypothesis. The authors

distinctly point out that the “parents’ math anxiety transfers math anxiety to their

children, which in turn negatively influences their children’s attitude toward

mathematics.” (p. 342). This creates a cycle. A young student goes through school

with math anxiety, carries it with them through adulthood, then passes on their math

anxiety onto their child. How can the cycle be broken?

Parents can also use the mindful/meditation apps to help relieve their math

anxiety and be aware of their feelings. If they do not feel comfortable to ask their

student’s teacher how to correct what their student is struggling with, then they should

go onto YouTube to find videos that show how to solve the problems that their student

struggles with. They can practice with the examples that the video shows to build

confidence and transfer that method of solving to the problems the student struggles

with.

Parents can also sign up for IXL. Some schools use this program with their

students but parents can also purchase IXL for $9.95 each month. IXL.com offers

support for math, language arts, science, social studies, and Spanish. Similar to Khan

Academy, IXL can categorize its subjects by grade level or topic. As students answer

questions correctly the problems become harder. There is an unlimited amount of

practice that students can do for each topic to gain mastery. Teachers have other

resources as well that they could share with parents and teaching techniques in the

classroom to help minimize math anxiety.

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Teacher Intervention

Finlayson (2014) discusses the importance of recognizing symptoms of math

anxiety and suggests on a constructivist approach to help alleviate math anxiety. She

chose to focus on pre-service teachers in her study because they had the opportunity to

both use strategies to help students reduce math anxiety and to use strategies for their

own math anxiety. This is similar to a study done by Geist (2015) whose participants

were Head Start pre-service teachers learned strategies to become aware of and

manage their own math anxiety when planning and implementing math lessons.

Some of the strategies that Finlayson (2014) mentions and are supported by her

study were activating prior knowledge, having multiple teaching strategies, engaging

with students and focusing on process over product. Some of the most effective

personal strategies for pre-service teachers that were reported were practicing math,

getting help, and building self-confidence. These are powerful strategies. Not only did

the author test strategies that would improve student performance and lower math

anxiety, but she also discovered strategies that could alleviate a teacher’s math anxiety.

Along with these strategies, integrating math sites such as Freckle or Dreambox

can help students and teachers. These programs adjust for the student to practice and

achieve mastery in each standard of math, and allows the teacher to monitor student

progress. The teacher could also pull students individually or in groups to help address

and fix what students are struggling with. Also allowing music to play softly in the

background creates a peaceful and calm atmosphere for students to work. Pandora is
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a free music site that has radio stations for nature sounds or The Piano Guys radio

station is also an appropriate station that is not distracting for students.

There was one study by Wang et al (2015) which took a different approach

regarding math anxiety. In this study, the authors wanted to look past math anxiety

being the only factor to math cognition and try to look deeper into the complexity of

emotions and thought processes. What they found from both studies were how much

students were intrinsically motivated along with the amount that math anxiety affected

their performance. So students that were highly motivated could better control their

math anxiety to facilitate learning whereas students with “lower math motivation, higher

math anxiety consistently had a debilitative effect on math performance.” (p. 1873).

Meaning some students could overcome their math anxiety if they had a strong sense of

internal motivation.

Cleary and Chen (2009) did a study that also regarded motivation and its

connection to math anxiety. They studied the effects of self-regulation and motivation

on math achievement of sixth and seventh graders. The authors found that task interest

in a math lesson was a vital motivator that predicted a student’s use of regulation

strategies. They state that

...strong efforts to make learning intrinsically interesting or enjoyable for students

should be an important focus of middle school administrators and teachers

because these processes have important implications for the choices that

students make about becoming strategically and cognitively engaged in their

learning. (p. 311)

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Cleary and Chen (2009) clarify that while their study contained sixth and seventh

graders as the participants, self-regulated strategies can be used in elementary

classrooms where students become self-directed learners rather than relying solely on

the teacher. With most students self-regulating in the classroom, the teacher can

directly work with students who have higher math anxiety. Working individually or with

small groups of students to lower their math anxiety will allow them to build and use

these self-regulating strategies more often in their future.

Conclusion

Each section shows how this cycle can create itself or keep this pattern of math

anxiety with others. Kulkin (2016) and Cheema and Sheridan (2015) two studies that

show how math anxiety can be introduced or identified at any grade level. Núñez-Peña,

Suárez-Pellicioni, and Bono (2013), and Ashcraft and Moore (2009) illustrate how math

anxiety or math avoidance can impact a college student’s choice in their future degree

and career. Soni and Kumari (2017) talk about the importance of parents influencing

their child’s math anxiety.

With parents who struggle with their own math anxiety, it can seem difficult to

help their child overcome math anxiety when they themselves have not overcome it.

Teachers have some tools to help their students be successful but could have their own

math anxiety they struggle with. Finlayson (2014), Wang et al (2015), and Cleary and

Chen (2009) all have different approaches or strategies to help students and teachers

overcome their math anxiety. These strategies can be useful to parents as well to help
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them and their students reduce math anxiety. It is possible to overcome math anxiety

and be successful in math.

Technology also aids in reducing math anxiety. Educational math sites are

helpful for students and parents. Students build confidence in solving math problems

when they get correct answers and enjoy practicing math when it feels like a game.

This promotes a positive feeling toward math which can help dissipate math anxiety.

Parents can use the videos from Khan Academy to help their students and can see how

students practice their math. Hallam, Price and Katsarou (2002) emphasize the

connection between calming music and the positive effect it had on performance,

memory, and pro-social behavior. Music can help create a calm atmosphere and

meditation/mindfulness apps allow us to be aware of our feelings. If someone was

getting too nervous or upset about not getting the correct answer, then they could use

the meditation/mindfulness app to refocus and calm themself. These apps can also

prepare someone before they begin a task. Anyone can ease their math anxiety with

these supportive technologies that can be used both inside and outside of the

classroom.

These technologies help when experiencing math anxiety, but there is room for

improvement in identifying math anxiety. The examples of when math anxiety is

present such as doing homework, solving problems as a class, and group work, can

make it difficult to identify students with math anxiety. One possibility is having an

online survey for students to take. Students could use a response method to briefly

explain how they feel while doing math problems or rate on a scale using one to five

emojis to identify the students feelings about solving problems. Creating a survey that
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can help identify who feels math anxiety could be the first step to these technologies

being able to alleviate math anxiety.

References

Ashcraft, M. H., & Moore, A. M. (2009). Mathematics anxiety and the affective drop in

performance. Journal Of Psychoeducational Assessment, 27(3), 197-205.

Beilock, S. L., & Willingham, D. T. (2014). Ask the cognitive scientist.

American Educator. Retrieved from https://hpl.uchi-

cago.edu/sites/hpl.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/American%20

Educator,%202014.pdf

Cheema, J. R., & Sheridan, K. (2015). Time spent on homework, mathematics anxiety
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and mathematics achievement: Evidence from a US sample. Issues In

Educational Research, 25(3), 246-259.

Cleary, T., and Chen, P. (2009) Self-regulation, motivation, and math achievement in

middle school: Variations across grade level and math context. Journal of

School Psychology (47) 291-314.

Finlayson, M. (2014). Addressing math anxiety in the classroom. Improving Schools,

17(1), 99-115.

Geist, E. (2015) Math anxiety and the "Math Gap": How attitudes toward mathematics

disadvantages students as early as preschool. Education. Vol 135. Iss. 3 328-

336.

Hallam, S., Price, J., & Katsarou, G. (2002) The effects of background music on

Primary school pupils’ task performance. Educational Studies. Vol 28. Iss. 2

111-122

Kulkin, Margaret. (2016) Math is like a scary movie? Helping young people

overcome math anxiety. Afterschool Matters. Iss. 23, 28-32.

Nunez-Pena, M. I., Suarez-Pellicioni, M., & Bono, R. (2013). Effects of math anxiety on
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student success in higher education. International Journal Of Educational

Research, 5836-43.

Richardson, F. C., & Suinn, R. M. (1972). The mathematics anxiety rating scale:

Psychometric data. Journal of Counseling Psychology. Vol 19 Iss. 6 551-554.

Soni, A., & Kumari, S. (2017). The role of parental math anxiety and math attitude in

their children's math achievement. International Journal Of Science And

Mathematics Education, 15(2), 331-347.

Wang, Z., Lukowski, S. L., Hart, S. A., Lyons, I. M., Thompson, L. A., Kovas, L., …

Petrill, S. A. (2015) Is math anxiety always bad for math learning? The role of

math motivation. Psychological Science Vol. 26 Iss. 12 1863-1876.