3 Simple Evidence-Based Strategies for Combating Math Anxiety.
This is the third and final installment in a 3-part series on math anxiety. The first two articles examined the causes and consequences of math anxiety, respectively. So for the purposes of this article I will assume that you are already on board with the idea that math anxiety is a very real problem with far-reaching impact.
In this article, I focus on what students and teachers can actually do about math anxiety. To that end, I present 3 simple evidence-based strategies that can be used to reduce the negative impact of math anxiety on student performance.
I have created the following shorthand names for the 3 strategies:
- Writing Off Anxiety
- Befriending Arousal
- Pursuing Mastery
For each of these strategies, I will present the theoretical foundation along with empirical evidence before providing explicit instructions for how to implement the strategy.
Writing Off Anxiety
Research suggests that anxiety impairs math performance primarily by taking up working memory, which is like your brain’s scratchpad for temporarily holding small bits of information such as phone numbers. This capacity for temporary storage is critical for the sort of multi-step problems frequently encountered in math. Unfortunately, working memory does not offer an unlimited data plan. If part of your working memory is taken up by performance worries, less space is available for doing math.
Based on this theory, Sian Beilock’s lab at the University of Chicago decided to explore the idea of having students write about their feelings prior to assessments. The reasoning was that getting students’ performance concerns out of their minds and onto paper might reduce distraction and rumination during the assessment itself, freeing up valuable working memory for completing the task.
Beilock and her crew found that a single bout of pre-assessment journaling was enough to significantly improve the performance of math-anxious students. Further evidence for the effectiveness of this approach comes from research showing that expressive writing reduces rumination in people struggling with PTSD.
So how do you do it? Simply take a few minutes to write about feelings before math assessments. If you are a teacher, you can use this downloadable template from the Mind Research Institute to facilitate the process. The template can also be tailored to younger students, for example, by letting them choose from a collection of emojis rather than using words.
“Aaaagghhh, what is this some kind of intervention?” If students give you some grief or resistance, you can offer an age appropriate explanation for why you are asking them to do it. The nice thing about the expressive writing strategy is that you don’t need to collect it, or even say anything else about it, for it to work. The writing alone is sufficient to do the trick.
Befriending Arousal
You’re an animal! Literally. What we are calling “anxiety” typically begins with physiological arousal – racing heart, sweaty palms, queasy stomach. That’s just the sympathetic nervous system doing its job of alerting us to possible threats in our environment (e.g. a rustle in the bushes). We can’t really do too much to stop this evolutionary hard wiring that is designed to keep us alive.
The second part of anxiety, however, is determining whether we should really be worried about that rustle in the bushes – is it a leopard or a lizard? This is where we have a chance to choose a different response. Research in sport and performance psychology has shown that whether people interpret their physical symptoms as being positive or negative is a much better predictor of performance than the intensity of the symptoms.
To put it simply, thoughts matter more than feelings when it comes to impacting performance. It stands to reason then that a possible intervention then is to try to get students to reinterpret the physiological symptoms of anxiety as normal and appropriate. The official name for this strategy is “cognitive reappraisal,” which is fancy psychobabble for “thinking differently” about one’s experience.
How does it work? This one is simple too. Just reframe your arousal as excitement rather than anxiety. In other words, think of heightened arousal as a performance enhancer. Am I kidding? Not at all. According to a 2010 study of students preparing to take the GRE, those who were simply told that anxiety was associated with better performance actually performed better, not only on both the practice exam in the lab, but also on the actual GRE.
Before you chalk this one up to the placebo effect, you should understand that the fight or flight response has evolved specifically to provide short bursts of extraordinary energy and focus so that the organism can overcome whatever challenge it might be facing. So we are not advocating some sort of Jedi mind trick here, or the power of positive thinking. We are simply alerting ourselves to the fact that physiological arousal is intended help us. There is a great TED talk by Kelly McGonical called How to Make Stress Your Friend that explains the biological mechanisms by which stress enhances the functioning of the brain and body.
Yet another promising strategy for changing the interpretation of arousal is repeating a mantra like “I am excited” several times immediately prior to assessments. This promotes an opportunity mindset, priming the mind to interpret the exercise as an exciting challenge rather than a debilitating threat. The sport psychology literature is chock full of empirical evidence for the benefits of positive self-talk for athletes going into competition. In particular, the benefits of self-confidence are thought to be mostly attributable to the impact of confidence on how a performer interprets arousal.
Pursuing Mastery
A huge advantage of the two strategies discussed so far is that they are designed to interrupt the anxiety process before it really has a chance to get going – “nipping it in the bud” to use a colloquial phrase. Better still would be to “pull the weed out by the root” so that anxiety never has a chance to get started in the first place.
What would be the root in this analogy, then? As I mentioned in a previous article, underneath math anxiety is a debilitating fear of failure, or more precisely, fear of negative evaluation that frequently accompanies failure in a social setting. This issue stems in large part from the heavy emphasis on achievement and competition in schools.
Having grown up in a society that glorifies competition, most of us have an achievement orientation that could be called a performance orientation, or ego orientation, in which achievement is measured in terms of demonstrating superiority over peers. Those with a performance orientation tend to view failure as a threat to their sense of self-worth and look for ways to avoid situations in which the level of challenge might exceed their ability – as in the case of math avoidance.
The alternative is called a mastery orientation, or learning orientation, which views achievement in terms of improvement over past performance. From this perspective, failure is seen as providing valuable information on how to improve. Research has shown that those who adopt a mastery orientation are less prone to anxiety and other negative emotional states when faced with the possibility of failure. I keep coming back to this idea of mastery orientation, because I firmly believe that it is an idea worth spreading and the efficacy research is sound.
In order to truly make a dent in math anxiety, we need to challenge the performance=self-worth equation that renders our young people terrified of failure. We need to do more than pay lip service to the idea of “failing forward” or learning through failure. Rather than offering points and gold-stars for correct answers, our teachers need to model a mastery orientation by celebrating mistakes and rewarding persistence in the face of adversity.
Summing Up
My aim with this article was to show you that you neither have to be a psychologist nor go see a psychologist to begin taking steps to combat math anxiety. I have presented 3 simple yet effective strategies that anyone can put to use immediately at home or in the classroom.
Again, the 3 strategies are:
- Writing it off: Journal about feelings prior to assessments to reduce rumination and free up working memory
- Befriending arousal: View arousal as indicating an exciting challenge rather than a debilitating threat
- Pursuing mastery: Strive for improvement rather than comparison to others or external standards
Through continued research and dissemination of information, I believe that we can change the game in math education and help students see that math is useful, fun, and even beautiful. In the end, perhaps our young people can simply enjoy the process of learning something new without feeling afraid that they will be judged as less than. That is what I would like to see.
With you in the pursuit,
Dr. Dave
Are you a teacher?
Check out my full course Understanding and Combating Students’ Math Anxiety available for CEU credits at CE Credits Online
References:
Working memory, math performance, and math anxiety, by Ashcraft & Kraus, 2007
Writing about testing worries boosts exam performance in the classroom, by Ramirez & Beilock, 2011
Turning the knots in your stomach into bows: Reappraising arousal improves performance on the GRE, by Jamieson, Mendes, Blackstock, & Schmader, 2010
How do students’ mastery and performance goals relate to math anxiety?, by Furner & Gonzales-DeHass, 2011
