On a scale from one to 10, how ‘maths anxious’ are you?” asks the questionnaire. This popular self-assessment survey is typical of the way we diagnose and measure maths anxiety in individuals - but what exactly is meant by the term?
It seems to be widely accepted that maths anxiety is a problem that must be addressed, with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development telling us in 2015 that it “warrants close attention” (see bit.ly/OECDScot). However, as teachers, are we fully aware of the issue and equipped with strategies for dealing with it?
Maths anxiety is typically defined as an adverse emotional response to any dealings with mathematics, which causes many to fear the subject or to avoid it altogether, and it is commonly associated with poor performance. It is generally accepted that those who experience feelings of nervousness, worry or tension when dealing with mathematics are showing signs of maths anxiety.
Emotional responses to maths are closely linked to an individual’s attitude towards the subject. Recently, the issue has been highlighted in relation to a decline in mathematical performance in Scotland, which the Making Maths Count group - established in 2016 - has set out to address. However, this is a critical question: is the anxiety causing the poor performance - or is the poor performance causing the anxiety?
Many have sought to create scales in an attempt to diagnose or measure levels of maths anxiety, in the hope of finding a strategy to address the problem. How do you quantify an emotional response, though?
The reliance has been on self-assessment questionnaires, which can create confusion between a genuine fear of mathematics and a general dislike for the subject. When I have spoken to (non-maths teaching) colleagues about maths anxiety, I have regularly been met with the blithe response, “That’s what I have!” This chimes with the response of “I hate maths” that I often heard when I told people that I was studying maths at university. There is a general acceptance that it is OK to dislike maths - and I believe this is a key part of the maths-anxiety issue.
Having spent most of my career teaching in state schools in Glasgow before moving to Hungary to teach in an international school, my experiences have been varied. As have the attitudes of my students’ parents: from parents who believed that mathematics was the single most important subject and that anything short of top grades would be disastrous for their child’s future, to those who believed that it was pointless and was never anything they needed in their lives.
Understandably, these parents’ attitudes influence their children and can impact levels of maths anxiety.
What we need is a change in attitude. By creating an atmosphere where mathematics is routinely enjoyed, there should be no room for feelings of fear or anxiety to foster.
While changing the attitudes of parents could be complicated, it is important to provide the best experience for future generations in an attempt to ensure that negative attitudes cannot continue to be passed on. The following suggestions are ways in which a maths classroom can be made a less daunting environment for students, where positive attitudes can flourish in the moment - and into adulthood.
Maths can often be seen as quite rigid, where there is a single method and a single solution to a problem. However, this is often not the case and it should not be taught as if it is. For example, many pupils (and teachers) could look at solving an equation using different steps with different workings, all of which are perfectly valid.
It is important that we allow for this freedom in lessons and, whenever possible, show pupils various methods of tackling problems rather than letting them become fixated on one standard procedure. If a pupil can offer a sensible alternative strategy to get to an answer, they should not be told that this is incorrect. This can also develop problem-solving skills: it is particularly important that students have confidence in trying different strategies.
This leads on nicely to another suggestion: there should be no fear of making mistakes. Successful mathematicians became successful by not giving up, learning from their mistakes and moving on to achieve their goal. Pupils should not be chastised for providing an incorrect answer; rather, we should be highlighting to them the opportunity to learn from it. It is important to discuss common errors with pupils; asking them to show their understanding of why they can be made is a means of ensuring secure learning on a topic.
Learning and understanding what is incorrect is very useful when trying to understand what a correct answer or strategy is. Any testing situation should provide the opportunity to check learning, and questions should enable pupils to provide evidence that they either know something or they don’t. Testing pupils on questions in unfamiliar contexts is important. However, we must make sure that questions are realistically set and not intended to catch pupils out -mistakes must be useful for teachers, too.
Lessons should be appropriately paced so that pupils have time to learn a topic properly before moving on. Pupils can be overwhelmed and confused when teachers race through coursework without time to properly embed learning. Unfortunately, this can often be out of the classroom teachers’ hands, with timetabling constraints not allowing appropriate time to teach a course in depth - forcing teachers to speed through topics or to miss them out altogether.
Large class sizes cause further difficulty here, with the need for some students to spend time embedding skills while those confident in a topic are waiting to move on to another. Computer programs that are “ability-adaptive” - in which questions increase in difficulty only once a certain level of understanding has been demonstrated - have been successful in addressing this issue. However, until this kind of technology is commonplace in the classroom, managing pace and challenge will continue to be a complex balancing act.
A particularly unhelpful message that can be conveyed to pupils is that there are some things that you have to do even though you may not enjoy them - and that maths is one of those things.
While I accept that not everyone may share a passion for mathematics, a pupil’s school experience of it should be positive and enjoyable. Games and puzzles are excellent ways to engage pupils that help to create a fun atmosphere - although these are by no means the only ways to promote enjoyment of the subject. Helping students to realise the satisfaction of solving a problem is essential to instil positivity in a maths lesson.
Success should be celebrated by praising pupils, highlighting that they have applied themselves to a task and achieved the required result. Pupils enjoy doing well and feeling successful, so it is essential that we allow them to experience this in maths.
Mathematics is viewed by teachers and pupils alike as something that individuals have an innate ability for, and that some people just can’t or won’t understand. Often, school organisation perpetuates this viewpoint, with rigid classes set by ability and no opportunity for any movement between levels. While I will not debate the pros and cons of class setting here, we have to look at how it conflicts with the popular idea of the “growth mindset”. The suggestions above fit the idea of showing pupils that intelligence is not fixed and that, rather, they can achieve and develop through hard work. The dilemma is how this message can be embedded within a framework where classes and courses are frequently organised in such a way that restricts progression beyond a certain level of working.
Long division
The above suggestions may help to address the issue of maths anxiety in the classroom - but we have to consider whether the issue is even larger than is often realised. If maths anxiety is closely linked to attitudes towards the subject that extend far beyond the school gates, do we need to be realistic about the impact that better classroom experiences can have in the broader sense? Does Scotland, in fact, have a deep cultural dislike of mathematics? The Scottish government would appear to think that this could be the case, having set up a task force in recent years to address the country’s apparent problem with mathematics.
In contrast, teaching in Hungary (a country with a rich mathematical history), I have experienced much more positivity towards mathematics: parents and students not only value the subject but also see that it has a clear purpose. With a large Chinese cohort in the school, bringing with it a great respect for maths, it is again clear to me that cultural factors certainly do have an impact on attitudes towards school subjects.
Changing the attitude of the whole country is clearly a huge task, but, as classroom teachers, it is important to do what we can and remain positive. The above suggestions on what to do about maths anxiety may seem obvious to some; helping pupils to have success in what they are doing, while also ensuring that the subject can be enjoyed, is surely part of the job.
All pupils should have a positive classroom experience of maths, where anxiety does not take hold. There are, of course, some constraints on what classroom teachers can do, but an awareness of negative emotional responses to the subject is essential. Scotland must not simply tackle maths anxiety - teachers and school leaders must get on the front foot and try to create the maths classroom that pupils enter with a spring in their step.
Jamie Wilson is a maths teacher in an international school in Budapest. He taught in Glasgow for 10 years and plans to return to teach in Scotland this year
This article originally appeared in the 19 April 2019 issue under the headline “Taking ‘maths anxiety’ out of the equation”
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