Analyzing The Mathematics Anxiety Of Pre-service Teachers

Mathematics anxiety has a great influence on mathematical learning. Too much or too little anxiety is against Mathematics study. Excessive anxiety may even make students get serious psychological problems. The causes of anxiety have many factors. Researches agree that Mathematics teachers play an important role in the produce and development of anxiety. Moreover, students'anxieties may differ if they are of different sex, at different age, in different grade and with different mathematics achievement.The object of this research is the pre-service teacher, and it explores the sources and influencing factors of mathematics anxiety through making, editing and carrying out some related questionnaires. Firstly, the researcher will choose university students from grade one to grade four as testees to take part in R-MARS and FIMA surveys, and then according to the FIMA survey results. The researcher will investigate the cause of mathematics anxiety based on the survey results combined with the interviews. Secondly, based on the R-MARS results, the researcher will do some study to analyze the level of pre-service teachers'math anxiety, and then make a study on the difference of these factors, such as the testee's grade, sex, age and mathematics achievement. Thirdly, the researcher will make some recommendations for the future teaching of pre-service teachers. The conclusions of this research are as follows:1. Analysis on causes of mathematics anxietyThis paper investigates the causes of the pre-service teacher's mathematics anxiety with a combined method of interviews and questionnaires. It shows that most mathematics anxiety is produced during primary school and junior middle school, and the causes are four: (a)the specialty of mathematics and some specific course content;(b)the teaching method and attitude of the teacher; (c)some teaching episode; (d)some indirect elements to mathematics course.2. Levels of math anxietyResults indicated that most college freshmen reported only low levels of math anxiety. The proportion of high anxiety level just is 5%, and the proportions of low and modest level anxiety are 50% and 45%. Grade three has relatively high degree of anxiety.3. Differential studyThere is no difference between the mathematics anxieties of opposite sex. But in the dimensions of test anxiety and course anxiety, there is a great difference of opposite sex.As a whole, the anxiety degrees of testees in different grades differ little. Specifically speaking, in the dimensions of test anxiety and number anxiety, there is no difference in different grades, the course anxiety degrees of testees in different grades differ little.The testees can be divided into three groups in high, middle and low mathematics levels, and the anxiety degrees in any dimension of these groups differ a lot.In the influence of more than two factors, the mathematics anxiety difference is not obvious. However, there is little difference between different dimensions.