Mathematics Teaching Anxiety among College of Education Pre-service Teachers in Ghana: The Influence of Mathematics Achievement and Field Experiences

Abstract

This study sought to explore the influence of mathematics achievement and field experience on pre-service teachers' anxiety towards the teaching of mathematics. Data was conveniently gathered from 119 pre-service mathematics teachers in a college of education in Ghana. The pre-service teachers were in two groups of mathematics major and mathematics minor. Using the English version of the Mathematics Teaching Anxiety Scale, we observed that the preservice teachers' anxiety towards mathematics teaching was generally moderate. Additionally, we observed that the pre-service teachers' mathematics teaching anxiety was related to their content knowledge, self-efficacy, teaching processes, and assessment practices. Our analysis further revealed that the major and minor pre-service mathematics teachers were different in their mathematics teaching anxiety regarding their self-efficacy but indifferent in the other three models. More so, we observed that the effect of mathematics achievement and field experience was statistically significant in the pre-service teachers' mathematics teaching anxiety regarding content knowledge. Nevertheless, mathematics achievement was the major predictor. Despite of the prevalence of mathematics teaching anxiety among the pre-service teachers, we are of the view that additional field experiences and subsequent mathematics pedagogic courses may help reduce the anxiety levels.