An approach to relieving anxiety in the mathematics classroom

Scholarly research as well as commercial writing indicates that math anxiety and test anxiety are serious problems in our society. Some educators and psychologists, having become more aware of math anxiety, are increasing their efforts to study it. This dissertation addressed debilitating anxiety (a form of neurotic anxiety) in contrast to facilitating anxiety. The experiment performed consisted of using Stress Inoculation Training and Cognitive Restructuring to reduce debilitating anxiety and to improve performance of students in a randomly selected developmental math class at Appalachian State University during the fall term of 1978. According to the instructor, Stress Inoculation Training was easily incorporated into the class activities, and the students' response was favorable. The findings of the study, however, demonstrated that statistically the experimental class did not show significantly more stress reduction or higher grades than did the control classes. Perhaps the lack of stress reduction in the experimental class was due in part to the fact that, in all three classes in the experiment, much emphasis was placed on learning the math, a skill which had previously evaded these students. Being successful at learning is, in itself, stress reducing and perhaps more so than having a strategy for managing stress