An intervention to address math anxiety in the geosciences

Math anxiety involves moderate to extreme fear, anxiety, and occasionally physical pain associated with anticipating or performing mathematical tasks. High levels of math anxiety have been tied to students taking lower levels of math and choosing less quantitatively challenging courses and careers. In a small geoscience program in a primarily undergraduate university, math anxiety has been assessed using a standardized math anxiety rating survey embedded into a more general anxiety survey. An intervention that involves re-phrasing geoscience-focused quantitative word problems was used on both low- and high-stakes assessments. In courses with no intervention at both the major and general education levels, students were found to have similar math anxiety ratings and no significant change over the semester. In contrast, students in the intervention major courses were statistically more likely to have a drop in their math anxiety when compared to the large control and also when compared to a smaller control of similar-level courses. In a geoscience classroom, rephrasing quantitative questions to focus more on geoscience knowledge versus the quantitative task appears to be a viable way to lower math anxiety while giving students’ experience to build their quantitative skills.

数学焦虑（math anxiety）指个体在预期或完成数学任务时产生的中等至重度恐惧、焦虑情绪，偶可伴随躯体疼痛。高水平的数学焦虑与学生选择更低难度的数学课程、报考量化要求更低的课程及职业相关联。本研究依托一所以本科教育为主的高校中的小型地球科学（geoscience）项目，采用嵌入于通用焦虑调查问卷的标准化数学焦虑评定量表，对受试者的数学焦虑水平进行评估。研究采用的干预手段为：将聚焦地球科学的量化应用题的表述方式进行重构，该干预应用于低风险与高风险两类考核中。在未实施干预的专业必修与通识教育课程中，学生的数学焦虑评分无显著差异，且整个学期内未出现明显变化。与之形成对比的是，接受干预的专业课程学生的数学焦虑水平出现下降的比例，在统计学上显著高于大规模对照组，同时也高于同级别课程组成的小型对照组。在地球科学课堂中，将量化问题的表述重构为更侧重地球科学知识而非单纯量化任务的形式，似乎是一种既能降低学生数学焦虑，又能帮助学生积累量化技能训练经验的可行方案。