Maths anxiety may be causing a national crisis, Cambridge University researchers have said, as they find that one in ten children suffer from anxiety at the subject.
Researchers surveyed 1,700 British pupils aged 8 to 13 about their feelings towards the subject. They found 10% of children suffered from maths anxiety. Other feelings caused by maths included fear and anger, while physical symptoms included a racing heart or struggling to catch breath.
" The project studied students' attitudes towards maths because of what could be called a maths crisis in the UK," researchers said." Many children and adults experience feelings of anxiety, fear or discomfort when they face maths. This may be leading to a low level of maths in the country." The number of adults with functional maths skills equal to a GCSE (英国普通中等教育证书) grade C has dropped from 26% in 2003 to only 22% in 2011, according to the survey. At the same time, only 57% of the children achieved the same level in functional maths skills.
Dr. Denes Szucs, a professor at Cambridge's Centre for Neuroscience (神经科学) in Education said that there is a misunderstanding that only low performing children suffer from math anxiety." This is a common misunderstanding that we have seen in decision makers," he said." They assume people are anxious about maths because they are poor achievers." In fact, more than 77% of children with high levels of maths anxiety are normal to high achievers. Dr. Szucs went on," Probably their maths anxiety will go unnoticed because their performance is good. But they are very worried and in the long term their performance is limited. This is a real danger here: these are children who are completely able to do maths at a normal level, but may keep away from it because they feel anxious." The research also found that girls have higher levels of maths anxiety than boys.
John's Hillman, director of education at the Nuffield Foundation said," Mathematical achievement is valuable, as a foundation for many other subjects and as an important predictor of future academic learning, job hunting and even health. Maths anxiety can seriously influence students' performance in both primary and secondary schools."
