People are afraid of looking incompetent : how can we stop fear of mathematics from holding us back?

Mathematics anxiety is a prevalent problem: about a third of the students globally report fear of mathematics. Recent studies suggest that math anxiety might be negatively related to individuals' ability to make advantageous choices and decisions beyond classrooms. There is a growing need for simple, comprehensive, practical approaches available to educators, carers and learners to address this and overcome emotional barriers to learning mathematics. This paper, discusses the results of a qualitative small-scale study implementing ‘The Toolkit’, a new approach introduced by Johnston-Wilder at al. (2020). The research underpinning The Toolkit is reviewed, the notion of psychological safety introduced and the process of the intervention is described. The results report reduced levels of anxiety and development of positivity towards mathematics. The key themes highlight the importance of addressing emotional aspects of learning mathematics in the classroom. All participants have rated the Toolkit as ‘extremely useful’ and would advise it as a practical strategy to anyone having mathematics anxiety. This approach warrants further research to properly establish its efficacy in different contexts