Reducing Math Anxiety in Elementary School Children

• In Event: 2-023 - Identifying Important Concurrent and Longitudinal Correlates of Math Anxiety in Elementary School Children

Integrative Statement

Math anxiety affects students around the world (Foley et al., 2017). Historically, research on math anxiety has focused on students 6th grade and older (Gierl & Bisanz, 1995; Jameson & Ross, 2011), but recent work has demonstrated that math anxiety is evident as early as first grade (Harari, Vukovic, & Bailey, 2013; Ramirez, Gunderson, Levine, & Beilock, 2013). Unfortunately, math anxiety tends to be relatively stable trait in adulthood (Jenßen, Dunekacke, Eid, & Blomeke, 2015). For that reason, it is crucial to figure out ways to intervene to stop the development of math anxiety before it becomes deeply entrenched and stable.

In order to create interventions to stem the development of math anxiety, we need to understand its developmental causes. Parents’ attitudes about math might be communicated to their children in ways that promote an intergeneration transmission of math anxiety (Maloney et al., 2015; Soni & Kumari, 2015). This likely happens through numerous mechanisms, though research points to parent-child math interactions as particularly important situations in which parents may communicate their negativity about math to their children.

Because of the potential importance of parents in the development of math anxiety and because research points to negative parent-child math interactions as key moments when attitudes about math are communicated from parents to children, an intervention that promotes low stress, positive interactions between parents and children could be one way to intervene and promote positive rather than anxious attitudes about math in young children.

In the current study, 187 children and their parents received an intervention in the form of a math app designed to promote positive parent-child math interactions, or a control app that also encouraged positive parent-child academic interactions but had reading rather than math content (Berkowitz et al., 2015). Children’s math anxiety was assessed before the parents received their apps and at the end of 3rd grade using a modified version of the MARS-E (Suinn et al., 1988). We hypothesized that the math app could improve parent-child math interactions for parents are anxious about math. We expected that the math app intervention would reduce the math anxiety for children of high math anxious parents and have no effect for children of parents who were low in math anxiety. Indeed, we found a significant condition by parent math anxiety interaction, such that being assigned to the math app intervention group, as compared to the control group, reduced math anxiety for children of high math anxious parents. In the control group, we saw the expected association between parents’ and children’s math anxiety. That is, parents high in math anxiety tended to have children who were high in math anxiety. When families were given the math app intervention, however, children’s math anxiety was low, regardless of whether or not they had math anxious parents. This finding suggests that by providing high math anxious parents with access to a supportive and scripted math app, we can prevent the high levels of children’s math anxiety typically associated with having a math anxious parent.

Authors

• Marjorie Weber Schaeffer, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Talia Berkowitz, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christopher S. Rozek, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sian L. Beilock, Barnard College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan C. Levine, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author