Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

Math Anxiety: Causes, Effects, And Preventative Measures, Megan R. Smith

Senior Honors Theses

Math anxiety is a real problem facing students and teachers today. The mathematics teacher especially needs to understand the causes and effects of math anxiety as well as ways to help students overcome it. There are many symptoms of math anxiety including an unwillingness to attempt mathematics problems, a fear of taking advanced mathematics classes, and being unusually nervous when in mathematics class. Math anxiety hinders students' working memory (Perina, 2002). It occurs at different ages in different people for different reasons. The main cause of math anxiety is the teacher himself It has been shown that students tend to …