Rethinking our approach to maths anxiety

Farhana Gokhool, Anthea Cowen and Julie Hulme argue that distinguishing typical maths apprehension from clinical anxiety enables more effective support and inclusive teaching

Anthea Cowen is a Learning Development Tutor at the University of Bedfordshire


Julie Hulme is a Professor of Psychology Education at Nottingham Trent University

As higher education professionals, we encounter a wide spectrum of emotional responses to mathematics and statistics.

This could vary from mild apprehension to teary outbursts, and often, it can also lead to complete avoidance of the subjects, despite their value in achieving success both in university and after.

Behaviours such as procrastination can hinder student learning, and as such, it is imperative that students are taught to challenge these feelings.

An analogy that we have used is fear of spiders – we may be likely to avoid places that house spiders, and in the same way, students may procrastinate or completely avoid maths-related tasks due to their “discomfort”.

Additionally, cultural attitudes, gender, and past educational experiences can all influence how someone responds to mathematics.

The term “maths anxiety” is commonly used to describe any negative emotion related to mathematics. However, when viewing it from a psychological viewpoint, we argue that there needs to be a distinction made between clinical anxiety and general apprehension.

Most of us would feel worried if we were taking an exam that included mathematics or statistics – it is normal to feel some level of worry about being tested, and we can learn to manage this.

Clinical anxiety, on the other hand, is more extreme, and significantly impairs the ability to manage daily tasks – it requires psychological support. By conflating these experiences, we run the risk of over-medicalising a typical reaction to potentially challenging material, and we might miss opportunities to provide appropriate support, or to help students to self-regulate their emotions.

Various approaches have proven successful in our practices for dealing with worries.

What works

We’ve found that opening up the conversation about anxiety early on – creating a safe space where students can explore what it is, when it shows up, and how it affects them. With each new group, we try to start this discussion as soon as possible, framing it in broad terms to keep it inclusive and non-threatening. Students often respond well when asked to think about situations that make them feel nervous – things like sitting an exam, taking a driving test, or speaking in public.

From there, we invite them to notice the physical and emotional effects anxiety has on them. Common responses include sweating, shortness of breath, feeling jittery or nauseous, difficulty concentrating, or an urge to get away. These are usually sensations they’ve experienced before, even if they haven’t named them. When we approach it this way – shared, grounded in real life, and without judgement—it tends to normalise the conversation. We’re always conscious of the potential for some students to feel overwhelmed by the topic, so we stay attuned and pause when needed, signposting to further support if things get too heavy.

Asking students what they already do when they feel anxious helps too. Giving everyone a chance to reflect and share helps surface the small strategies – breathing deeply, taking a walk, positive self-talk – that they may not realise they’re using. It affirms that they do have tools, and that managing nerves is something within their control.

Simply asking students how they feel about using maths or statistics in their studies can also help. More often than not, a few will admit to feeling nervous – or even anxious – which opens the door to normalising those feelings. From there, we can connect the strategies they already use in other situations to the challenges they face with maths, helping them build a toolkit they can draw on when the pressure mounts.

Some strategies that students find helpful include mindful breathing, visualising a calming place, or even splashing cold water on the face to reset. Others involve filtering out negative messages that chip away at confidence, re-framing self-talk to be specific and encouraging – like swapping “I can’t do maths” for “I’ve learned before, I can learn again” – and, crucially, building skills and confidence through steady learning and practice.

There may, however, be cases where a student’s anxiety is not assuaged by employing these techniques, and a level of clinical anxiety may be suspected, requiring further support from counsellors or other professionals. In these cases, ensuring the students are guided, even taken, to access the relevant support services is key. This may lead to requests for reasonable adjustments as well as prescribed treatments, thus enabling the student to face the challenge and hopefully emerge successfully on the other side.

Prizes for all

Of course, these are all interventions that are useful for students who are struggling with worries about maths – but there are also things we can do to support all of our students. Some students will be struggling quietly; some will have other learning differences that might impact on their ability to learn maths, such as ADHD.

One approach we might consider is Universal Design for Learning, where we make learning accessible for all our diverse students, regardless of the specific issues that they might experience, or whether they tell us about those issues. Giving students choice in how they complete their assessments, allowing them access to resources or notes (open book) during test situations, and not imposing tight timescales on assessments can be one way to support students to achieve their best. Taking this approach also removes some of the administrative work involved in working out reasonable adjustments!

Sometimes there are professional requirements that mean that such adjustments are not possible (for example, calculating doses in nursing where achieving 100% is a requirement), but often it can be helpful to consider what we are assessing. Do we need to assess a student’s ability to solve a maths problem from memory and under time pressure, or do we want to know that they can solve a problem they may encounter in a typical graduate role when they might be able to search how to approach it?

Authentic assessment can be a useful tool for making maths learning and assessment less scary and more accessible.

Differentiating between a regular level of apprehension and clinical anxiety will help us to be better placed to implement strategies to support students and staff in succeeding on their mathematical or statistical journey. This can begin at the curriculum design and development stage, extending beyond our work with individual students.

Supportive relationships between learning development tutors, students and teaching staff enable us to implement tailored strategies for minimising maths anxiety. By working together, we can reframe maths learning to be seen as an opportunity for growth, and not something to fear.

2 responses to “Rethinking our approach to maths anxiety

  1. I have suffered from a phobia of maths for decades, 4 and half to be mathematical about it.
    At Junior school level roughly 7 to 10 or 11 years old my maths teaching was pretty poor, because I was very good at other subjects I was allowed to fall behind and then almost stop doing maths to any reasonable level.
    By the time I reached senior school I was so far behind, I now convinced myself that I was just bad at maths, however, again my high achievement level at other subjects kept me in the top set for maths. This false position in a top set was the worst thing for me and I know this because for a short period I was moved in to a lower attainment level because I was struggling and yet when I went to the lower class I excelled and actually thrived in lessons because I was no longer at the bottom of the class and felt more confident. Unfortunately I did too well and was moved back into the higher level class and consequently began to struggle again just in time for my o’level exams which I failed miserably.
    As I have aged, I have realised that I’m not too bad at maths, when I try online quizzes or tests I’m not too bad, I would love to re take my exam but it’s many hundreds of pounds for short courses, some day maybe, but this article highlights an area that in Britain we just never have taught Maths well, it’s much better in schools today than when I was at school but it could be improved by not making maths a constant competition in class. If maths lessons where everyone took part and contributed and not one where the quick and agile hog the limelight and the stragglers recede to the back and corners of the class and desperately wait for the bell, which is what I did for 5 years. Apologies for the length of this reply but fitting 45 years of hurt into a sentence is difficult.
    One more thing, I should like to add that I loved science and excelled at this subject at school until I fell behind in maths and I have always bitterly regretted not taking this up to study at University.

    1. Hi Billy, Thank you for your comment. I want to say how sad I am to hear of your experience and the long term and wider impact it has had on you. Sad too, that it is likely you are not the only one to have faced such circumstances. I do wish you the very best and would encourage you to pursue studies that do interest you and will add another dimension to your life. There are free resources that are available which can support you in a range of studies; for mathematics, one resource is the National Numeracy Challenge that is available online and is targeted at adults as well as children. Best wishes.

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