In a sample of 1,000 Italian students, a research found that girls in both primary and secondary school had higher levels of both maths anxiety and general anxiety.
More detailed investigation in 1,700 UK schoolchildren found that a general feeling that maths was more difficult than other subjects often contributed to maths anxiety, leading to a lack or loss of confidence. Students pointed to poor marks or test results, or negative comparisons to peers or siblings as reasons for feeling anxious.
“While every child’s maths anxiety may be different, with unique origins and triggers, we found several common issues among both the primary and secondary school students that we interviewed,” says Dr Denes Szucs from the Department of Psychology, the study’s lead author.
Students often discussed the role that their teachers and parents played in their development of maths anxiety. Primary-aged children referred to instances where they had been confused by different teaching methods, while secondary students commented on poor interpersonal relations.
The researchers showed that it is not only children with low maths ability who experience maths anxiety – more than three-quarters (77%) of children with high maths anxiety are normal to high achievers on curriculum maths tests.
However, it is almost certainly the case that in the long term, people with greater maths anxiety perform worse than their true maths ability.
The researchers set out a number of recommendations in the report. These include the need for teachers to be conscious that an individual’s maths anxiety likely affects their mathematics performance. Teachers and parents also need to be aware that their own maths anxiety might influence their students’ or child’s maths anxiety and that gendered stereotypes about mathematics suitability and ability might contribute to the gender gap in maths performance.
Maths anxiety exists and it hits already at primary school
