When does math anxiety in parents and teachers predict math anxiety and math achievement in elementary school children?
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When does math anxiety in parents and teachers predict math anxiety and math achievement in elementary school children? The role of gender and grade year Monika Szczygieł1 Received: 8 June 2019 / Accepted: 20 May 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The study investigated the relationship between math anxiety in parents and teachers and math anxiety and math achievement in first- to third-grade children. The results indicate that math anxiety in fathers (but not mothers and teachers) is associated with math anxiety in first-grade children and third-grade girls. Math anxiety in mothers and teachers (but not fathers) explains the level of math achievement in third-grade children. The research results indicate the importance of adults in shaping pupils’ math anxiety and math achievement, but these relationships vary depending on gender and the grade year. The obtained outcomes generally suggest that adults’ math anxiety is not a social source of children’s math anxiety, but it can be considered a source of low math achievement among children in the final grade of early school education. Keywords Math anxiety · Math achievement · Early school age · Parents · Teachers
1 Introduction 1.1 Predictors and development of math anxiety and achievement Math skills are mentioned in the recommendations of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (962/EC/2006, 2006) as one of the key competences in the process of lifelong learning. They are also considered a key area of STEM education (Gonzalez and Kuenzi 2012; Holmlund et al. 2018). Early school experiences in learning mathematics are very important for the future development of children’s skills in this area (Levine et al. 2010). It is important to understand the factors that predict differences in the level of math achievement in elementary * Monika Szczygieł [email protected] 1
Institute of Psychology, Pedagogical University of Krakow, ul. Podchorążych 2, 30‑084 Kraków, Poland
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school children. This is because difficulties in math learning may even appear at the very beginning of education (Jordan et al. 2006). The determining factors for math achievement in children include the following individual variables: biological (Tosto et al. 2014), cognitive (Kyttälä and Lehto 2008; Sasanguie et al. 2013), emotional (Wu et al. 2012), and personality (Li and Kun 2007). There are also environmental variables: related to culture (Phillipson and Phillipson 2007), family (BlevinsKnabe and Musun-Miller 1996; Phillipson and Phillipson 2007; Sirin 2005), and school (Lorenzen 2017; Maxwell et al. 2017). Math anxiety in children (Harari et al. 2013), their parents (Maloney et al. 2015), and teachers (Widmer and Chavez 1982) is considered to be an important predictor of math achievement, both individually and environmentally. According to Richardson and Suinn (1972, p. 551), “math anxiety is a feeling of tension and anxiety that interferes with the ability to manipulate numbers and to solve mathematical problems in
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