Math anxiety indicates psychologically negative mind-set towards solving mathematical problems which impacts on students’ learning practices and out comes. It can be inferred that maths anxiety greatly impacts maths education and students careers choice. The professional and economic gains that will result from changing maths anxiety into maths confidence can not be overstated. Using a sample of 9th and 10th graders, this study investigated whether students’ mathematics anxiety differed significantly according to a group of variables. A total of 300 students participated in the study. ”Mathematics Anxiety Scale for Secondary School Students” and “The Personal Information Form” was used for data collection. Independent samples t-tests, Coefficient of correlation were used to analyze the data. Results showed that students’ mathematics anxiety differ significantly according to gender, environment of the school and the performance in mathematics. Female students reported significantly higher mathematics anxiety than males. Students with higher achievements in mathematics reported lower degrees of mathematics anxiety. However, results did not show any significant difference in students’ mathematics anxiety with respect to their grade level and school environment.
Mathematics anxiety, achievement, secondary school
