Maths anxiety is when a negative reaction with regard to learning or completing maths tasks which then interferes with maths performance is experienced.
How does maths anxiety present?
Maths anxiety can present in various ways:
Physiological - increased heart and breathing rate, nausea, and tenseness;
Cognitive - worries and invasive negative thoughts such as negative self-talk, blanking out;
Emotional – anger, low self-esteem, a fear of looking “stupid” and frustration.
These symptoms are experienced when the person is anticipating a maths task or working on one, and can lead to difficulties completing maths tasks correctly. In order to lessen the negative impacts of these symptoms, a person needs to self-regulate their emotions to mediate the symptoms they are experiencing.
Maths anxiety can lead to a person having low maths confidence and feeling disinterested and unengaged when working on maths tasks. Because having anxiety about something means a person values it in some way, the value a person places on maths can lead to anxiety for different reasons. Anxiety could arise from feeling that being good at maths means you must be highly intelligent or that maths is useful for a future job and thus you must be good at it to succeed in career goals.
What are the underlying causes?
Maths anxiety usually revolves around set beliefs about maths and learning, such as the idea that maths potential can’t change with practice and effort. A person may believe that they are bad at maths and that’s that. As a result, they may not feel that they can acquire better maths skills through learning and practice. These beliefs can be formed through a person’s experiences with their teachers, friends, and family. In order to change such beliefs, negative perceptions of maths and maths ability need to be tackled and more positive beliefs around maths need to be built.
Children who are reprimanded for incorrect maths may develop a fear of maths and become anxious when needing to engage with it. Parents who apply too much pressure on their children to succeed in maths may also allow their children to develop maths anxiety out of fear of disappointing their parents. Ineffective teaching from the classroom can also cause maths anxiety, in that the students may not be being taught in ways that make sense to them and so they feel they are left behind. Time limits on maths tests and tasks can also make students feel anxious and forget maths concepts that they may have remembered should they not have been anxious. This is because maths anxiety can affect a person’s working memory making them more susceptible to making maths errors and decreasing their capacity to engage in maths tasks successfully.
How to help?
The symptoms and causes of maths anxiety are different and have different effects on a person’s learning abilities, thus needing various strategies in order to manage and cope with it. For some, breathing exercises when feeling overwhelmed by their maths anxiety may help. For others, positive reinforcement when they complete maths tasks successfully can help them become more confident in their maths abilities. An enthusiastic and patient maths tutor may also help with confidence and allow for maths practice in an environment with little pressure, bettering their maths abilities and knowledge.
Reframing the maths anxiety can also help. By doing this, it comes to light that maths is not meant to be scary and that with practice it can become easier. This can be done by writing down your maths fears and thinking critically about why they make you anxious, for example: “I take too long to understand maths so that must mean I’m dumb.” Here, we see that the belief of “instantly good at maths = smart”. However, this is not the case, there are a lot of things that can make a person smart, and being good at maths on the first try isn’t all of them. To lessen the maths anxiety experienced, this can be reframed as “practicing maths will help me understand it more easily”. In this, maths is no longer a determiner of general intelligence but rather a goal to attain. Maths can become easier with practice and understanding, and sometimes that takes time and effort which is 100% okay.
References
Buckley, S. (2020). Issues In The Teaching Of Mathematics: Mathematics Anxiety. Victoria State Government.
Whyte, J., & Anthony, G. (2012). Maths Anxiety: The Fear Factor in the Mathematics Classroom. New Zealand Journal of Teachers’ Work, 9(1), 6–15.
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