Maths anxiety in psychology undergraduates: A mixed–methods approach to formulating and implementing interventions

Abstract

Due to the empirical nature of the discipline, psychology students, during the course of their degree, are required to become proficient with a range of quantitative methods. Unfortunately many of these students experience high levels of maths anxiety, which can have a damaging effect on this aspect of their educational development. The first study in this paper used focus groups to identify, from psychology undergraduate and postgraduate students, potential interventions that could be used to reduce anxiety in an undergraduate sample. The second study implemented those interventions that were deemed valid and practical on a sample of 246 psychology first and second year undergraduates. The effectiveness of these interventions was mixed, but does suggest further avenues that tertiary educational institutions could take to reduce maths anxiety in their student body, in particular enhancing the use of real–life examples in quantitative methods teaching.

A supported flipped learning model for mathematics gives safety nets for online and blended learning

“…Engages students on nonmathematical degree tracks and demonstrate potential applications to reduce maths anxiety [10,61]. Formative, untimed, unassessed quizzes, repeatable with parameter randomisation, created in Numbas.…”

“…Allows students to ask any questions they needed without the pressure of asking in front of their peers [61]. Explicit encouragement of students to ask "silly" or "obvious" questions [10].…”

“…Quiz conducted anonymously with competition elements such as scores and leader boards turned off to reduce maths anxiety [10,65]. Quizzes provide an element of fun to reduce anxiety [61]. Allows students to test their knowledge in a low-stakes environment and get immediate feedback on their understanding [42].…”

“…Asking questions in smaller groups reduces the social stigma of asking questions and reduces maths anxiety [61]. Worked answers were put on the VLE at the end of the week.…”

“…The supported flipped model presented by this study hoped to bridge the gap between home-learning and the exam-style short-answer questions that formed the tutorial by holding the question-answer session and quizzes as a separate class with multiple-choice questions specifically. In order to add an additional layer of support, a lot of emphasis was put on anonymity at this middle stage so that students felt able to ask the questions they wouldn't have felt comfortable asking in front of the whole cohort [61], and got to practice the multiple-choice questions anonymously as well. This stepwise increase in difficulty from online content to interactive session to tutorial in three steps is the main way that this supported model differs from previous flipped learning models.…”