Academic Success Skills: Mathematics Anxiety

Mathematics anxiety initiates unproductive behavioral responses and makes mathematical reasoning, sense-making, and critical thinking more difficult, if not impossible. Because mathematics anxiety emerges from a variety of subjective appraisals and cognitive constructions, instructors can manage students’ anxiety by structuring various features of the learning environment—including the curricular resources they design for students—to reduce the likelihood that they will engage in the cognitive activity that results in their feeling anxious. A goal of entry-level mathematics instruction is to create the conditions for students to participate and engage in ways that are necessary for them to learn the mathematics meaningfully. A focus on reducing or even preventing students’ mathematics anxiety is essential to addressing this goal. Anxiety and its effects can be magnified when gender or racial stereotypes of performance are activated in the learners, and instructors need resources to help frame learning situations in ways that promote confident and productive participation by all students.

Faculty at the MIP Academic Success Skills Initiation Workshop in May, 2019 identified the following aspects of Mathematics Anxiety as critical for success in the Oklahoma entry-level college math pathways.

Faculty at the MIP Academic Success Skills Initiation Workshop in May, 2019 recommended that instructional resources developed by CoRDs and ARCs addressing Mathematics Anxiety for success in the Oklahoma entry-level college math pathways should:

1. Provide a research-based description of mathematics anxiety as a real phenomenon that can be addressed through instructional and curricular innovations. The CoRD should address common perceptions that mathematics anxiety is a trait that an instructor has neither the responsibility nor agency to influence.

2. Provide a research-based description of how to recognize mathematics anxiety, including self-handicapping behavior and stereotype threat.

3. Identify and/or develop strategies both for preventing students’ anxiety and for helping students cope with the anxiety they experience. The development or identification of these strategies will involve reviewing the research literature, and might involve consulting an educational psychologist.

4. Describe the relationship between anxiety and stereotype threat, growth and fixed mindset, goal structures, and identity.

5. Provide recommendations for addressing students’ anxiety that apply to a variety of instructional contexts (e.g., online, large lecture, small classes, different types of institutions.

Suggested Resources

Aronson, J., & Steele, C. M. (2005) Stereotypes and the Fragility of Academic Competence, Motivation, and Self-Concept. In A. Elliot & C. S. Dweck (Eds.) The Handbook of Competence and Motivation. New York: Guilford.

This chapter provides a detailed description of the nature of stereotype threat, conditions under which it may occur, and strategies to reduce stereotype threat and minimize its impact on academic performance.

Tallman, M. & Uscanga, R. (in press). Managing students’ mathematics anxiety in the context of online learning environments. In J. P. Howard & J. F. Beyers (Eds.), Teaching and Learning Mathematics Online. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

In this chapter, Tallman and Uscanga define mathematics anxiety as an emergent construction, progressively elaborated and refined through iterative cognitive appraisals of environmental stimuli and somatic states. They synthesize contributions in the areas of emotion, identity, goal theory, and Piaget’s genetic epistemology to propose a theory of the cognitive antecedents of mathematics anxiety. Based on this synthesis, they recommend design principles for online learning environments to minimize students’ anxiety by purposefully affecting the cognitive appraisals and constructions that contribute to its emergence. This resource is most relevant to addressing foci (1), (3), (4), and (5) above.

Zeidner, M. (2014). Anxiety in education. In R. Pekrun & L. Linnenbrink-Garcia (Eds.), International handbook of emotions in education (pp. 265-288). New York, NY: Routledge.

Zeidner surveys the research literature on anxiety in educational contexts to describe its nature, antecedents, consequences, and treatments. He focuses specifically on evaluative anxiety in educational settings. This resource is most relevant to addressing foci (1), (2), and (4) above.

Zeidner, M. & Matthews, G. (2011). Anxiety 101. New York, NY: Springer.

Zeidner and Matthews provide a comprehensive overview of anxiety. Specifically, they discuss the biological origins of anxiety, describe its cognitive, somatic, and behavioral facets, summarize various theoretical models of anxiety, distinguish its major forms, describe scales for measuring anxiety, identify its cognitive and behavioral consequences, and describe various treatments for anxiety. This resource is most relevant to addressing foci (1), (2), (3), and (4) above.