The influences of mindfulness on high-stakes mathematics test achievement of middle school students

Abstract

Research has shown that mindfulness can reduce students' negative emotions associated with high-stakes tests and thereby improve test performance. This study explored the association between mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) and high-risk math test scores of middle school students, which is noticeably slim in the domain of mathematics education, through a mediating process involving math-specific test anxiety and math self-efficacy. Using data from a sample of 45 students, age 12–13, we found empirical support for a significant positive correlation between mindfulness and middle school students' math achievement. Participants listened to a mindfulness audio every other week before a mathematics test. Weekly mathematics test scores, student group discussion data, and in-depth interview data were analyzed to explore how mindfulness affected students' mathematics test performance, which showed a statistically significant improvement after mindfulness compared to mathematics achievement without the intervention. Our results indicate that mindfulness can relieve mathematics anxiety symptoms, including physiological manifestations, test-unrelated thinking and worries, and problem-solving obstacles caused by mathematics anxiety. Also, mindfulness, especially its non-judgmental attitude, positively affects students' mathematical self-efficacy. The current research provides evidence of the mindfulness intervention's efficacy for improving middle school mathematics test performance but also identifies the complexities of implementing it with large numbers of students.

Daily breath-based mindfulness exercises in a randomized controlled trial improve primary school children’s performance in arithmetic

“…MBIs can teach children to become aware and let go of their anxiety without further rumination. Qualitative interviews after a MBI on mathematics anxiety in China confirmed that the participants observed fewer physiological manifestations of anxiety, less test-irrelevant worry, and fewer obstacles to solving mathematical problems while at the same time gaining more math self-efficacy 21 . Meta-analyses agree that MBIs contributed to improving children’s socioemotional functioning, which included anxiety, stress, emotion regulation, and internalizing behaviors 11 , 13 , 14 .…”

“…A RCT evaluating a MBI with fourth and fifth graders demonstrated that mathematics grades improved as a trend when the IG was compared to an active control group (ACG) 20 . Zuo and Wang 21 confirmed that an audio-based MBI contributed to the improvement of eighth graders’ math performance in high-stakes testing in China. Correlational studies indicated moderate positive associations between self-reported mindfulness and mathematics performance in middle school students 22 .…”