Teaching Methods IDENTIFIERS *Situational Effects

This study investigated two statistics classroom environments that "a priori " appeared to hold promise as being motivationally effective classrooms. One environment (2 classes totaling 51 students) was at the high school level and the other environment (4 classes, 70 students) was at the graduate level. The study focused on students ' perceived interest in the learning environment, individual interest in statistics (with pretest and posttest measures), and mathematics anxiety (also with pretest and posttest measures). Results indicate that both environments were high in situational interest, did substantially increase the mean individual interest of students, and had a beneficial, but small, impact in terms of associated decreases in mathematics anxiety. In addition, there did appear to be some gender effects, although these were not consistent across the two learning environments. Finally, it is noted that the environments appeared to be particularly effective for students with previous low individual interest i