Math Anxiety Scores in Texas

Math anxiety is a serious concern for teachers and students. It has been determined to cause mental and physical stress, avoidance behaviours, and poor overall academic performance in students of all ages, including those in kindergarten. Younger Texas students with math anxiety tend to avoid math by rushing through or not completing math assignments and homework. Critical concepts are often missed during early grade levels, resulting in lack of math foundation that is essential for later years of education.

The problem compounds as students encounter more complex math in middle school, high school, and college, further hurting achievement and promoting avoidance behaviours. With a heavy focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in middle and high schools as well as standardized tests such as Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), students with math anxiety are more likely to avoid math in college, deterring them from pursuing math-based careers. Jo Boaler, author and professor of mathematics at Stanford University, emphasises “that early anxiety snowballs, leading to math difficulties and avoidance that only get worse as children get older.”

Recognizing Math Anxiety

Before you take the steps to cure math anxiety within your child, you must recognize what leads to it and how to spot it. Understanding the causes, signs and symptoms of math anxiety will help your child overcome this issue.

Peers, Teachers and Parents Influences

Many factors can negatively influence children’s perspective of math from an early age. The fear of being wrong evolves as a student faces public embarrassment when they get a math question wrong. With peer pressure, math anxiety can be triggered. Teachers’ influence also plays a huge role in shaping a child’s view of the subject. When students have difficulties understanding certain math concepts, they need a teacher who is willing to help them understand, and possibly change teaching methodologies. As every child is different, there is more than one correct way to learn math, and teachers should be able to identify the learning gaps in order to help students gain confidence and achieve math success.

Psychological, Cognitive and Emotional Effects

Some students with math anxiety can get unusually nervous, clammy hands, increase heart rate, upset stomach, and lightheadedness. Besides these unwell physiological symptoms, students may also develop negative cognitive thinking. When math isn’t a student’s strong subject, they would believe they are naturally bad at it and will always be. They lose hope and motivation to improve their math skills. Students with math anxiety could also have intense emotional reactions. When students are unable to answer math questions quickly and correctly during math class, they get overwhelmed and start panicking, grow angry, or get teary eyes.

Overcoming Math Anxiety

Expressive Writing

While literature and math are completely different subjects, the data analysis from a 2018 Modified Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (mAMAS) has shown that expressive writing has an immediate benefit (though a tiny benefit) when used prior to math tests. It changes how students think about mathematics by explicitly expressing their emotions, stress, and fears. The findings also suggest a link between parents’ negative attitudes and math anxiety levels in these students. Although expressive writing may be helpful, math anxiety is built up by the tense relationship between parents and their children over the years, and thus, may be difficult to eliminate with simple expressive writing. Parents need better tools that can assist them to help their children overcome math anxiety.

Prodigy Game & Other Math Games

Prodigy is a free, curriculum-aligned math game that offers content from every major math topic and covers Grades 1 to 8. Teachers are also increasingly using other math games to boost engagement. The goal is to motivate students to develop skills and make math fun. According to Educause, gameful learning can “reinforce the fact that failure is neither a setback nor an outcome but rather an indication that more work is needed to master the skill or knowledge at hand.”

Read Math Books

A 2018 study done by American Psychological Association (APA) showed that reading math-related stories before bed has a powerful lasting effect on children’s academic achievements. It also provides opportunities for engagement when kids answer content questions, simple additions, or math word problems after their parents finish stories.

Anxiety Reappraisal

Get a Right Math Tutor

An eight-week study showed that one-on-one tutoring sessions can help remedy highly math-anxious children. MRI scans conducted before and after the sessions showed decreased amygdala activity, induced by math anxiety, in students. In addition, a study in the Journal of Emerging Investigators found that students who received positive reinforcement had significantly lower heart rates when doing mental math. Instead of punishments, a well-trained teacher would motivate children through reward and an optimistic approach to overcoming any hurdles in learning. Teaching methodologies also differentiate a specialized math tutor from any math teacher.

Are you in need of a math tutor to help reduce your child’s math anxiety? MathProject offers math classes in Katy, Richmond, Cypress, Sugar Land, Missouri City and/or Hillcroft. We work hand-in-hand with the parents and our teachers to provide the best, and most suitable math tutoring for each student. Contact us today at 1-844-628-4243 to book a free assessment. For more information on our specialized curriculum and teaching methodology, visit our website at https://mathproject.us/.

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Citations:

The Effect of Expressive Writing on the Math Anxiety Scores of Middle School Students Enrolled in a Public School in East Texas – digitalcommons.liberty.edu
Overcoming Math Anxiety: 12 Evidence-Based Tips That Work – prodigygame.com
Disassociating the relation between parents’ math anxiety and children’s math achievement: Long-term effects of a math app intervention – psycnet.apa.org
Remediation of Childhood Math Anxiety and Associated Neural Circuits through Cognitive Tutoring – pubmed.gov