Competency-based learning (CBL) is a grading strategy that emphasizes the mastery of content. At Middle Technical College (MTC), success rates in the college algebra class have decreased. This study will answer two questions: how will a CBL approach to learning affect student perceptions of their success and what are student perceptions of after…

The mathematics education community has long emphasized applying wordproblem tasks in mathematics classrooms to foster understanding of mathematical concepts. As such, teachers of mathematics are eager to expose students to wordproblem mathematical tasks. However, students find such mathematical tasks particularly challenging, leading teachers to…

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…

Although interest in math anxiety in young children has recently increased, the results of previous studies on math anxiety correlates are inconsistent. The article presents the results of two studies conducted among early school-age learners (6-11 years) where the Math Anxiety Questionnaire for Children (MAQC) was used. The results indicate that…

Early childhood and elementary preservice teachers often fear mathematics, find it irrelevant, have mathematics anxiety, hold negative self-perceptions, and have low mathematics achievement. This study investigates the influence of an identity exploration intervention on preservice teachers' mathematics identities during a college Algebra course…

A majority of college students exhibit feelings of fear and discomfort when put into situations that require the use of mathematics. These students are characterized to be mathematics-anxious and tend to overlook the idea that one can gain many benefits from learning the subject. This paper investigates the various factors that have led to and…

Students from many different subject areas are required to study statistics as part of their qualification. The Open University developed a statistics module which could simultaneously be studied by students from a variety of different disciplines, by engaging them with topics which are of interest to everyone, namely money, education and health,…

Individuals with better spatial thinking have increased interest and greater achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). This relationship means that STEM education may benefit from leveraging spatial thinking, but measures of spatial thinking as they relate to specific…

The article discusses the integration of cartoons into a finite mathematics college course. However, cartoon integration is appropriate for any educational level STEM course. Students and the author used an online comic strip creator, MakeBeliefsComix.com, to create cartoons that connected concepts to the real world and history. Following Cho,…

Quantitative literacy is an essential twenty-first century skill that universities are heavily invested in teaching to students. The social sciences play an important role in these efforts because they attract students who might otherwise avoid data and mathematically oriented courses and because they ground quantitative reasoning in political and…

The issue of poor statistical literacy amongst undergraduates in the United Kingdom is well documented. At university level, where poor statistics skills impact particularly on social science programmes, embedding is often used as a remedy. However, embedding represents a surface approach to the problem. It ignores the barriers to learning that…

Research has shown mathematical anxiety impacts on mathematical confidence and attainment, leading to avoidance of mathematics and mathematical careers. This research investigated if an intervention with peer mentors could help reduce students' mathematical anxiety. It took place at a Secondary School (11-18 years) in the South West of England,…

For students to thrive in the U.S. educational system, they must successfully cope with omnipresent demands of exams. Nearly all students experience testing situations as stressful, and signs of stress (e.g., racing heart) are typically perceived negatively. This research tested the efficacy of a psychosituational intervention targeting cognitive…

The aim of this research work is to analyze whether there is a difference in the degree of anxiety towards mathematics among students of different educational levels. The study is not experimental and cross sectional, and it is based on difference of means between groups. The sample is not probabilistic, and consisted of 226 students from…

Mathematics competency is fast becoming an essential requirement in ever greater parts of day-to-day work and life. Thus, creating strategies for improving mathematics learning in students is a major goal of education research. However, doing so requires an ability to look at many aspects of mathematics learning, such as demographics and…