Nancy Pantoja. Understanding how math anxiety develops over time and relates to math attitudes and math achievement in middle school
Previous work has examined the bidirectional relationship between math anxiety and math performance. While it is evident that math anxiety negatively impacts performance on complex math tasks, it is unclear how math anxiety affects math performance across development. The first part of this study was completed five years ago with a racially and economically diverse sample of first and second graders. The second part of this study will examine the relation between math attitudes and math skills in elementary school, and how these early attitudes and skills relate to math attitudes and math skills several years later in middle school. Specifically, I ask a) how early math anxiety relates to later math anxiety and math achievement, b) how parents’ early math attitudes and math-related supports relate to
children’s later math attitudes and math achievement, and c) how basic numerical skills relate to later math achievement. To answer these questions, I will collect measures of middle school students’ math achievement and math attitudes, to examine how they relate to these early measures. I predict that a) students’ early math anxiety relates to their math anxiety and math performance five years later and b)
parents’ math attitudes and reported math-related supports during elementary school will relate to students’ middle school math achievement. Perhaps these relations look different for children from lower-income backgrounds. Implications involve a better understanding of how to support robust math achievement and avoid the pitfalls of math anxiety and its insidious effects on math achievement, particularly in low-income children.
