In 2022, Australian students recorded their worst performance since tests began after a long-term slide in the subject. Almost half of Australian students failed to reach the national proficient standard in maths.
Maths teacher and researcher Greg Ashman said he was not convinced that anxiety experienced in maths differed from other domains.
“Do kids get anxious when confronted with maths assessments or maths problems or being asked to do maths? They probably do, but people get anxious about a lot of things, particularly things that they don’t feel that they’re particularly good at,” he said.
He cautioned against using gimmicks to counter feelings of low confidence, saying the best antidote to the feeling of anxiety was good maths teaching.
“You get a lot of this: ‘Let’s address maths anxiety by creating fun activities, by going on excursions, by having guest speakers, by making models of many-sided shapes out of paper and sticky tape and all this sort of thing,’ ” he said.
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“Now that can certainly be fun. And kids will say they enjoy it because kids enjoy doing fun things, but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue, which is their ability to do maths.
“To reduce that … You want to give them the ability to solve the problems, to do the maths, then they won’t feel as anxious about it.”
The report also said that Australian teachers were less likely to teach students to memorise rules and apply them to solve mathematical problems, but more likely to instruct students to “keep trying” when they faced a difficult mathematical problem, compared with teachers in high-performing countries.
