This is consistent with global data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (OECD, 2013) showing a notable pattern in which maths anxiety was greater in 15-year-old girls than boys. However, it is important to point out that where differences are observed these are typically quite small, and many research studies have found no such gender difference. For example, in a survey of 2,000 students (aged 11-18 years) carried out by the Maths Anxiety Trust in 2018, there was little difference in self-reported maths anxiety between male and female students. So, the picture is a little unclear.
What is maths anxiety?
We need to be mindful that ‘maths anxiety’ can mean different things. For example, it could be feeling anxious when it comes to maths tests or being asked maths questions in front of other people. However, it could also be anxiety when learning maths, using maths in everyday situations, or even listening to others talk about maths. This means that when people are asked about their feelings towards maths, the exact question they are asked matters.
To complicate matters further, people can experience a wide range of feelings and thoughts about maths, and it’s easy to confuse these. For instance, feeling anxious about maths is different to having low confidence in your ability to learn maths, which in itself is different to whether you think maths is useful or enjoyable.
How correlated are gender and maths anxiety?
It’s possible that conclusions about gender depend on how maths anxiety is measured, along with who exactly is being studied – comparing people according to their gender excludes a wide range of other characteristics that could be important. For example, research has shown that maths anxiety can vary according to socio-economic status, educational background, and the country in which a person lives.
It is important to recognise that various other psychological characteristics, such as general anxiety, are correlated with maths anxiety. In fact some recent findings indicate that the general level of anxiety someone feels might be responsible for gender differences in maths anxiety. This is because women, on the whole, report higher levels of general anxiety than men.
Taking note of such correlations is important. Firstly, there might be a transference effect. That is, a person might feel generally quite anxious and that anxiety transfers to specific areas of that person’s life. In other words, feeling generally anxious might contribute to feeling anxious when it comes to maths, whether that is learning it, using it, or being tested.
Secondly, if gender is important in the context of anxiety more generally, we should be open to the possibility that a gender difference in maths anxiety appears only on the surface, i.e. it can be explained by other anxieties (anxiety about being tested, social anxiety, or just generally feeling more anxious). Finally, we know that strategies that aim to generally relax and calm a person have a beneficial effect when it comes to maths anxiety.
What can we do to address maths anxiety and inequalities between groups?
One argument is that there should be a focus on what contributes to an individual person’s anxiety or confidence in respect to maths. If we do this sufficiently, broader group differences, such as gender, might start to disappear.
If we start to look more closely at some of the things that seem to predict maths anxiety, it becomes clear that a focus on the individual is important anyway. This is why there has been a move in recent years to a toolkit-approach to addressing maths anxiety; a one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to work.
Regulating emotional and physiological responses
Maths anxiety toolkits usually involve activities that support relaxation and regulation of emotion, e.g. ensuring effective breathing. They also tend to develop learners’ understanding of the anxiety response, including getting to grips with the role of the sympathetic nervous system; even a basic understanding of why a person responds anxiously if they are in a maths situation can help. This is especially important when it comes to our physiological responses.
It can be unsettling if we feel our heart racing or our palms sweating if we’re faced with a maths problem, so having awareness of the brain-body response can be the first step in understanding the role of arousal. In fact, some research has shown that telling people that increased arousal during maths testing is not harmful, and that arousal improves performance by helping us cope with demanding situations, can actually reduce maths anxiety.
This demonstrates the power of how we approach maths-based situations. For instance, someone who is low in confidence and high in maths anxiety might anticipate feeling stressed when faced with maths before they have even encountered it.
Early experiences with maths and their long-lasting effects
When we face a new maths situation we bring along our thoughts and feelings, but also our previous experiences. Therefore, it can be helpful to understand the ways in which our previous maths experiences play a role in our current feelings towards maths.
Talking through negative past maths experiences might reveal the basis for many years of fear, apprehension, and avoidance of maths, understandably biasing a person’s view of the subject.
For younger learners, various strategies have been devised to support the expression of their anxiety. Expressive writing has shown mixed results, and it is likely outcomes depend on the wide range of ways in which this can be implemented. Psychodrama group therapy has been used with a small number of older students, providing a way to physically and verbally retell negative maths experiences; presumably offering a helpful level of catharsis.
The use of stories has also proven to be a useful way of normalising maths talk, whereby young maths anxious learners can relate to a storybook character, following their journey, and gradually changing their self-beliefs in-line with the positive changes observed in the story’s protagonist. One such book is Whoopsie Doodle Little Noodle: Noodle’s Maths Challenge.
Challenging and changing self-beliefs and mindsets
Along the lines of changing self-beliefs, maths anxiety toolkits often incorporate activities around ‘cognitive restructuring’. A good example of this is facilitating a change from having a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
Research has shown that higher levels of maths anxiety are associated with a fixed mindset. That is, the belief that you will not be able to develop your mathematical knowledge or understanding. Building a supportive culture of adding the word “yet” to the end of a phrase such as “I can’t do this sum”, is one simple yet effective strategy to address an unhelpful mindset.
Similarly, identifying different areas of maths that contribute most to a person’s anxiety, as well as those that people perhaps feel more comfortable with, is another step towards changing one’s mindset. In particular, identifying your ‘growth-zone’, which is the area between comfort and high anxiety, is an important part of the Mathematical Resilience Toolkit, which is explored in The Mathematical Resilience Book (Johnston-Wilder & Lee, 2024).
Small differences and big effects
So, in relation to confidence, anxiety, and attainment in the domain of maths, we are faced with broad challenges associated with inclusivity and the need to tackle inequalities between groups of people. Group differences, such as in the case of gender, for example, should not be sidelined. After all, even small differences can still be important, perhaps contributing to a cumulative effect and feeding into inequalities at the population level.
It is likely that many factors play a role in how someone feels about maths, whether that is how confident they feel, how anxious they are, or whether they see themselves as a ‘maths person’. People encounter many subtle maths experiences over time, which are likely to shape their feelings and thoughts about the subject. The actions of parents, siblings, peers, teachers, and characters depicted in the media, will all have an influence.
School and education
Indeed, it is vital that we take a holistic approach to ensuring people – of all ages and backgrounds – have confidence in how they approach maths learning. The home numeracy environment is likely to play a part, from caregiver involvement in maths talk and number games at home, to parent-child homework interactions.
Schools require teachers to be confident in teaching maths, because research has shown that the strongest predictor of students’ maths anxiety is how competent they perceive their maths teacher to be.
Films, TV shows, and many other forms of media continue to depict mathematicians in a negative light, as somehow different to the norm and something to ridicule. Individuals, organisations, and society can all support a change for the better.
In cases of high maths anxiety, however, we are in a fortunate position of having accessible and effective strategies to address it. There is now greater connectivity between researchers and practitioners working in maths education. The University of Derby Mathematics Anxiety Research Group have produced a Guide for Educators, which provides an overview of strategies that have shown promise in supporting learners with maths anxiety.
