If the thought of fractions or differential equations makes you break you out in a cold sweat, you are not alone. Maths anxiety – a negative emotional reaction to mathematics – is a global phenomenon, hampering maths achievement regardless of where people live, research has found.
It’s not only a child’s own maths anxiety that affects their performance but that of their peers: the largest and most culturally diverse study to date shows that in about half of countries, including England, the average level of maths anxiety within the same school or classroom predicts individual students’ maths achievement, independently of their own anxiety levels.
“Having found that the emotional state of one’s peer group may have an effect on children’s maths achievement, it is important for teachers, parents and policymakers to not only be mindful of a child’s own ability or emotional state, but the context in which they’re studying,” said Dr Nathan Lau, of the University of Western Ontario, who led the research.
Many people experience some degree of discomfort when confronted with a mathematical problem, ranging from mild tension to intense dread. Some people also experience physical symptoms such as a racing heart, sweating or feeling sick. Besides avoiding everyday situations involving numbers, people with such feelings may hold back from applying for promotions or pursuing careers in related subjects such as science, technology or engineering.
To better understand the contextual factors underpinning maths anxiety, Lau and colleagues analysed data from 1,175,515 students who participated in three large international studies of achievement. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that students in countries with higher levels of maths anxiety tend to achieve lower maths grades.
The strongest predictor of maths anxiety was how competent students perceived their maths teacher to be: those with less confidence in their teacher tended to feel more anxious. Being set large amounts of maths homework, and parental involvement in homework, also contributed to anxiety to a lesser degree.
In about half of countries, it wasn’t only the child’s own level of maths anxiety that predicted their achievement but that of their peers. One factor appeared to be the cultural acceptance of uncertain situations.
“It seems like the more rigid or less accepting of uncertainty [a culture is], the lower this peer group effect is,” Lau said. “We can’t really say if there’s a causal relationship, but one hypothesis is that teachers have a more organised way of teaching their materials [in such countries]. Possibly, children with maths anxiety prefer there to be fewer surprises, such as being called on to stand up and work out a question on a blackboard.”
Prof Margaret Brown, the president of the Maths Anxiety Trust, said: “It shows for the first time that maths anxiety is not just an individual phenomenon which affects maths attainment, but it also strongly correlates with other contextual factors like the pupils’ confidence in their teacher, teachers’ own confidence in their maths, and the amount of homework and parental involvement in completing it.
“It is also significant that maths anxiety varies across different countries. England’s results suggest that our secondary students are among the most seriously affected by maths anxiety, and that the effect of factors from both the school and home environment are particularly strong in England. This provides strong evidence that maths attainment in England could be improved by changing our mathematics curriculum, teaching styles and our examination system so that they cause less stress on students, teachers and parents.”
Prof Denes Szucs, the deputy director of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Neuroscience in Education, said: “This study confirms some of the things we already knew about maths anxiety, but using a giant sample.” His team recently interviewed 1,700 UK schoolchildren and found that a perception of maths being more difficult than other subjects often contributed to the problem. Teachers also played a role, with anxious children often reporting being confused by different teaching methods.
“The big question is what to do about it,” Szucs said. On an individual level, he recommended trying to disentangle feelings of anxiety from ability. “Our UK research showed that most children who are maths anxious are not actually low achievers, they just feel anxious about maths. Possibly they picked it up from their family or school, but it is not necessarily a justified anxiety.”
What is maths anxiety?
Mathematics anxiety is officially defined as “a feeling of tension and anxiety that interferes with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations”.
Extreme maths anxiety is thought to affect 2-6% of UK secondary school pupils, although estimates vary, with another study suggesting that a third of UK apprentices experience “noticeable” maths anxiety, while 19% have a tendency to be anxious but may not show such clear signs. Females tend to express more anxiety about maths than males, although studies have suggested this gender gap does not develop until adolescence.
It is separate to dyscalculia, a specific and persistent cognitive difficulty in understanding numbers, although sometimes the two conditions overlap.
Maths anxiety does not necessarily correlate with ability: A 2018 study found that 77% of children with high maths anxiety were normal to high achievers on curriculum maths tests. However, it can limit performance in certain situations and contexts. One possibility is that the worries and intrusive thoughts associated with maths anxiety disrupt or compete for cognitive resources that are needed to solve mathematical problems.
