The Relationship Between Parental Psychological Control And Mathematics Anxiety In Junior High School Students: The Mediating Role Of Mathematics Academic Self-concept

Athematical anxiety refers to the anxiety state such as nervousness and anxiety generated by individuals in related mathematical situations such as processing numbers and learning mathematical knowledge.According to a survey by the Program for International Student Assessment(PISA),33% of 15-year-old students in 65 countries and territories feel helpless when doing math activities.Mathematics anxiety not only reduces the individual’s cognitive ability and the efficiency of solving mathematical problems,but also affects the individual’s mathematical efficacy.Junior high school students in adolescence are more eager to get rid of the authority and control of their parents and to achieve independence and autonomy than when they were children.According to Self-Determination Theory,the satisfaction of autonomous development is the basis for good individual development,while the lack of satisfaction of basic needs can lead to negative emotions and problem behaviors.Parents,as the main tutors of mathematics learning for junior high school students,usually impose their own requirements and expectations on mathematics learning on adolescents,which may force adolescents to succumb to their parents’ wishes because of authority,guilt,fear of parental scolding,etc.A positive self-concept is formed in mathematics academics,resulting in mathematics anxiety.Based on Self-Determination Theory,this study takes junior high school students as the research objects,and analyzes the current situation of mathematics anxiety and its relationship with the parents’ psychological control and mathematics academic self-concept perceived by junior high school students from the influencing factors of mathematics anxiety.Explore ways to ease math anxiety.This study includes two sub-studies.Study 1 adopted a cross-sectional research method,using the Parental Psychological Control Scale,the Mathematics Academic Self-Concept Scale and the Mathematics Anxiety Scale,and selected 1750 junior high school students from three middle schools in Fujian Province as the research objects to explore the parental psychological control,perceived by junior high school students,and anxiety.The triadic relationship between mathematics academic self-concept and mathematics anxiety.The results showed that parental psychological control perceived by junior high school students significantly negatively predicted mathematics academic self-concept,significantly positively predicted mathematics anxiety,and mathematics academic self-concept significantly negatively predicted mathematics anxiety.In the second study,32 junior high school students(students with low scores in mathematics academic self-concept and high scores in mathematics anxiety)were selected as experimental subjects,and the experimental group and the control group were used to measure the experimental design before and after the experimental group.Conducted ten group tutoring interventions for mathematics academic self-concept.The results showed that there were significant differences in the post-test scores of the experimental group and the control group in terms of mathematics academic self-concept and mathematics anxiety;in the experimental group,the post-test of mathematics academic self-concept was significantly higher than the pre-test,and the post-test of mathematics anxiety was significantly different.significantly lower than the pretest.It shows that this group intervention is effective.The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)Parental psychological control can directly and negatively predict mathematics anxiety of junior high school students,and it can also affect mathematics anxiety through the mediating effect of mathematics academic self-concept.(2)Under the condition that the level of parental psychological control remains unchanged,group intervention on the mediating variable of mathematics academic self-concept can effectively improve mathematics academic self-concept and reduce mathematics anxiety.