TheoryDigital technologies have become an integral part of everyday life that children are exposed to. Therefore, it is important for children to acquire an understanding of these technologies early on by teaching them computational thinking as a part of STEM. However, primary school teachers are often reluctant to teach CT. Expectancy-value theory suggests that motivational components play an important role in teaching and learning. Thus, one hindrance to teachers’ willingness to teach CT might be their low expectancies of success and (...) high emotional costs, e.g., anxiety towards CT. Thus, introducing preservice teachers to CT during their university years might be a promising way to support their expectancies and values, while simultaneously alleviating their emotional costs. Prior CT competences might contribute to these outcomes.AimsWe investigated whether a specifically designed seminar on CT affected preservice teachers’ expectancies and values towards programming.Method: A total of 311 German primary school and special education preservice teachers took part in the study. The primary school preservice teachers received a seminar on CT and programming with low-threshold programming tasks, while the special education teachers served as a baseline group. The seminar was specifically designed to enhance expectancies and values and decrease emotional costs, following implications of research on expectancy-value theory.ResultsThe preservice teachers who visited the seminar gained higher expectancies and values towards CT and programming compared to the baseline group. Moreover, their emotional costs decreased. CT was positively related to change in expectancies and values and negatively related to emotional costs.DiscussionInterventions with low-threshold programming tasks can support primary school preservice teachers in finding trust in their abilities and values towards CT. Moreover, their anxiety towards CT and programming can be alleviated. Thus, first steps in preparing preservice teachers to teach CT in their future classrooms can be taken in university. (shrink)

Emotion regulation strategies may reduce the negative relationship between math anxiety and mathematics accuracy, but different strategies may differ in their effectiveness. We recorded electrodermal activity to examine the effect of physiological arousal on performance during different applied ER strategies. We explored how ER strategies might affect the decreases in accuracy attributed to physiological arousal in high math anxious individuals. Participants were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, or a “business as usual” strategy. During the ES condition, HMA individuals (...) showed decreases in math accuracy associated with increased EDA, compared to low math anxious individuals. For both HMA and LMA groups, CR reduced the association between physiological arousal and math accuracy, such that even elevated physiological arousal levels no longer had a negative association with math accuracy. These results show that CR provides a promising technique for ameliorating the negative relationship between math anxiety and math accuracy. (shrink)

The under-representation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics is ubiquitous and understanding the roots of this phenomenon is mandatory to guarantee social equality and economic growth. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of non-cognitive factors that usually show higher levels in females, such as math anxiety and neuroticism personality trait, to numeracy competence, a core component in STEM studies. A sample of STEM undergraduate students, balanced for gender and Intelligent Quotient, completed online self-report questionnaires and a (...) numeracy cognitive assessment test. Results show that females scored lower in the numeracy test, and higher in the non-cognitive measures. Moreover, compared to males’, females’ numeracy scores were more strongly influenced by MA and neuroticism. We also tested whether MA association to numeracy is mediated by neuroticism, and whether this mediation is characterized by gender differences. While we failed to detect a significant mediation of neuroticism in the association between MA and numeracy overall, when gender was added as a moderator in this association, neuroticism turned out to be significant for females only. Our findings revealed that non-cognitive factors differently supported numeracy in females and males in STEM programs. (shrink)

Socio-economic status and mathematical performance seem to be risk factors of mathematics anxiety in both children and adults. However, there is little evidence about how exactly these three constructs are related, especially during early stages of mathematical learning. In the present study, we assessed longitudinal performance in symbolic and non-symbolic basic numerical skills in pre-school and second grade students, as well as MA in second grade students. Participants were 451 children from 12 schools in Chile, which differed in school vulnerability (...) index, an indicator of SES. We tested an explanatory model of MA that included SES and longitudinal performance in basic numerical skills as predictors. The results showed a direct effect of SES on MA and a mediating effect of performance in symbolic and non-symbolic comparison tasks in pre-school. However, in second grade, only performance in symbolic comparison significantly mediated the SES-MA relationship. These findings suggest that performance in non-symbolic comparison plays an important role in explaining MA at initial stages, but that its influence is no longer significant by the time children reach formal instruction in second grade. By contrast, as children’s formal educational experience in mathematics increases, MA becomes linked primarily to symbolic numerical tasks. In sum, SES affects MA and this is due in part to the effect of SES on the development of numerical learning in pre-school, which in turn has an impact on subsequent, more complex learning, ultimately leading to differences in MA. We discuss the implications of these findings for preventing and acting upon the emergence of MA. (shrink)

Many studies have indicated that mathematics anxiety, and other negative attitudes and emotions toward mathematics, are pervasive and are associated with lower mathematical performance. Some previous research has suggested that working memory is related to both mathematics anxiety and mathematics. Moreover, both gender and chosen course of study appeared likely to influence students’ attitudes to mathematics. In the present study, 40 university undergraduates completed a battery of assessments investigating working memory, attitude to mathematics, test anxiety. and mental and written arithmetic. (...) Attitudes to mathematics were significantly associated with the other variables: working memory, test anxiety, and both measures of mathematical performance. The other variables were not strongly associated with one another. There were no gender differences in mathematical performance, but females exhibited more negative attitudes to mathematics and higher test anxiety than males. After controlling for test anxiety, there ceased to be significant gender differences in attitudes to mathematics. Science students had more positive attitudes to mathematics than humanities students, but the groups did not differ in test anxiety, Science students were better at written but not mental arithmetic. They were also better at working memory, but this was not a significant covariate when the groups were compared on mathematical performance and attitudes to mathematics The results are discussed, with particular focus on implications for future research on influences on mathematics anxiety. (shrink)

In this study, we extended a model of the relations among ADHD symptoms, anxiety, and academic performance. Undergraduates (N = 515) completed self-report measures of anxiety (i.e. trait, test, math, and literacy) and ADHD symptoms. During the study, they completed math and literacy measures and reported their current (i.e. state) anxiety three times. There were significant correlations among ADHD symptoms and all measures of anxiety. However, neither ADHD symptoms nor trait anxiety were correlated with math or literacy performance. Test-anxious students (...) reported increasing state anxiety as the study progressed. In contrast, math-anxious students reported increased state anxiety following the math tasks but not the literacy tasks and literacy-anxious students reported increased state anxiety following the literacy tasks but not the math tasks. With respect to performance, math-anxious students had worse math performance and literacy-anxious students had worse literacy performance whereas test anxiety was not directly related to performance on either math or literacy tasks. Patterns of relations did not differ for men and women, but, except for literacy anxiety, women reported higher levels of all types of anxiety. These results could help educators understand how affective responses are related to university students’ academic performance. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between the students’ self-efficacy, test anxiety and performance on Mathematics of Saint Joseph College, Junior High School Department for SY 2019- 2020. The respondents of the study were randomly chosen junior high school students. Descriptive correlational method of research was used. The data gathered were statistically treated using the Excel and IBM SPSS programs, which summarize the percentage scores, weighted means, correlation coefficients, independent t-test values, and corresponding p-values of relevant (...) statistical tools. Findings indicated that, at average, the students were not confident on their mathematical self-efficacy, moderately anxious on their mathematical test anxiety and satisfactory on their mathematical performance. More findings showed that the following variables have significant relationships: mathematical anxiety and mathematical self–efficacy; mathematical self-efficacy and mathematical performance; and mathematical test anxiety and mathematical performance. The higher the self-efficacy level, the lower the degree of testanxiety; the higher the self-efficacy, the better the mathematics performance; and the lower the test-anxiety, the better the performance. The study recommends regular conduct of diagnostic tests on mathematical self-efficacy and test anxiety and design programs to address the enhancement of learners’ mathematical self-efficacy and reduce their mathematical test anxiety. The researcher recommends Mathematics Learning Development Program (MLDP) as the output of the study. (shrink)