Supporting pre-service primary teachers to develop the required specialist knowledge for teaching mathematics is a complex task. The knowledge required for mathematics teaching at primary level is multi-faceted and the efficacy of mathematics teaching is inextricably intertwined with a teacher's own beliefs and attitudes about mathematics and…

"Can we do math instead of watching the movie?"--Kindergartener. A student did ask that question. A whole class enthusiastically did math instead of watching the movie (Cardinale, 2019). Where? In a public school in Lodi, New Jersey, where kindergarteners learned how to think like mathematicians: in numbers, symbols, and patterns (DiLeo…

Today it is critical to excite young people about mathematics in our high-tech STEM world we live in. Math teachers today need to embolden students to be confident in their ability to solve problems, to think and use their imaginations, to understand mathematical concepts, to be creative, and to see math as a human endeavor. The author feels that…

In this paper, we make a qualitative analysis of didactic experiments performed with five 6 to 10-year-old children and five primary school teachers, starting from a structured game with probabilistic elements. The fundamental idea is to stimulate probabilistic thinking not only by playing a card game with decision making in uncertain situations,…

Research Findings: Two hundred and sixty-seven Chilean children from grades 1-3, their fathers and their mothers completed measures of implicit and explicit math-related beliefs (math-gender stereotypes, math self-concepts) and feelings (math anxiety), as well as tests of mathematical achievement. Children, fathers, and mothers exhibited…

Background: Children have been found to report and demonstrate math anxiety as early as the first grade. However, previous results concerning the relationship between math anxiety and performance are contradictory, with some studies establishing a correlation between them while others do not. These contradictory results might be related to varying…

Many noncognitive constructs affect mathematical problem-solving performance. The aim of the present study is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of a number noncognitive constructs such as mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety, and metacognitive experience on the mathematical problem solving of middle-school students. The…

Mathematics anxiety negatively impacts cognitive processing, performance, expectations, motivation, and future choices. However, research has not examined patterns in students' mathematics anxiety levels over time. The current study addresses this gap by exploring group-based trajectories in mathematics anxiety during the transition to junior high…

The aim of the study was to analyze the mathematics exam anxiety and problem-posing self-efficacy of middle school students in terms of their school, gender, and grade levels, as well as the relationship among these parameters. The research was conducted with 37 fifth grade students, 53 sixth grade students, 72 seventh grade students, and 77 eight…

This dissertation study aimed to explore whether and how individual differences in verbal and visuospatial working memory capacity and executive functions influence elementary students' mathematics fact mastery and mathematics anxiety as they engage in learning using ReflexTM, a game-based, visuospatial rich adaptive learning platform for…

Expressive writing (EW), or writing about one's thoughts and feelings, has been posited to reduce the working memory (WM) load that pressure and anxiety can impose on test-takers. The mechanisms of EW are far from clear, however, and social and developmental questions about its role in shaping children's engagement with academic contexts remain.…

The aim of this study was to determine the dimensions of the relationship between math anxiety and mathematics achievement of the third grade students with and without mathematics learning difficulties. Data were collected from 288 elementary school students using math anxiety scale and math achievement test tools. The mathematics achievement test…

Past research has revealed that, relative to primary-school students, high-school students have less-positive attitudes to mathematics and perceive their classroom environments and teacher--student relationships less favourably. This study involved the transition experience of 541 students in 47 classes in 15 primary (year 7) and secondary (year…

Literature that investigates the factors underlying arithmetic problem-solving achievement extensively evaluates the cognitive components, such as working memory (WM) and processing speed, at the basis of this acquisition. Recently, studies have shown that also the emotional factors, such as math anxiety (MA), could play a crucial role in the…

Most studies of children's attitudes to mathematics have dealt with children in second grade or later, and have suggested that attitudes deteriorate, and anxiety increases with age. The present study investigated attitudes to mathematics in 67 English and 49 Chinese children at the end of their first year of school. The participants were given…