An Online Survey to assess Student Anxiety and Attitude Response to Six Different Mathematical Problems

Abstract

Survey results for anxiety responses and attitude responses to six particular mathematics problems are presented for 43 students from grades 4, 5, and 6. These data are analysed for a relationship between mathematics anxiety and attitude to mathematics. An online survey method is used and is found to be a valuable tool for use in a primary school setting. The six mathematics problems vary in type between traditional levelled tasks in the form of basic mathematical operations and rich tasks. Basic operations are varied amongst three levels of difficulty and rich tasks are varied amongst three degrees of complexity of context. A weak relationship is found between mathematics anxiety and attitude to the six mathematics problems presented to students. Some differences are observed between boys and girls for responses to rich tasks. Also, differences in both attitude and anxiety responses are found due to a variation of problem difficulty for traditional basic operations. Further research is suggested that promises to inform the pedagogies of practicing teachers. Anxiety response to mathematics is a significant concern to educators in terms of the perception that high anxiety will relate to avoidance of mathematics. An internet search quickly shows the broad interest of many in this subject. This paper presents survey