During the course of my reading lately I've had to consider the effects of Maths anxiety on students in Higher Education and ways in which we can help students deal with the anxieties they experience and hopefully lessen them over time. What is Maths Anxiety? Maths anxiety is a vicious circle where a student finds mathematics difficult, becomes anxious about this, this anxiety negatively impacts on their learning and so they find maths even more difficult. Encounters with maths lectures/classes becomes a prompt for anxiety and so the student begins each encounter with a negative attitude. Mathematics Anxiety was described by Spicer (2004) as "an emotion that blocks a person's reasoning ability when confronted with a mathematical situation" (p.1). While a student is in a state of anxiety their working memory, which they need for working on their maths, is instead focused on how anxious they are. This anxiety negatively effects their learning and performance. Th
RebelMaths are two Mathematics Educators working in the Irish Higher Education Sector. We are always seeking ways to improve our teaching and see this blog as a great motivator to make us gather some of our thoughts and maybe share some things we have learned along the way.