Page 41 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews

Impact of child and teacher factors on mathematical development
concept does. Pajares and Kranzler (1995) showed math self-efficacy, moreover, to be predictive of mathematics achievement in general and mathematical problem-solving in particular.
Lee (2009) found clear cross-cultural differences when she examined all three aspects of math self-belief in conjunction with the mathematics achievement of 276,165 children aged 15 years using PISA 2003 questionnaire data from 41 countries. The strongest associations between math self-concept and mathematics achievement were found in Western European countries. The strongest associations between math self-efficacy and mathematics achievement were found in Asian and Eastern European countries. The associations between math anxiety and mathematics achievement were stronger in Western and Eastern European countries than in Asian countries. And some of the Western European countries, including the Netherlands, showed particularly low levels of math anxiety.
Inconsistent findings have nevertheless been found for math anxiety in relation to young children’s mathematics achievement (Dowker et al., 2016). Math anxiety was found to negatively correlate with mathematics achievement due to avoidance of mathematics, the suppression of cognitive processing by anxiety, and/or the roles of social factors (e.g., teachers’ and parents’ own math anxiety) (Ashcraft, 2002; Maloney & Beilock, 2012). Math anxiety has been shown to interfere with working memory and thereby have a strong effect on mathematics achievement (Ashcraft & Kirk, 2001). Thoughts about how badly one is doing or may do (i.e., aspects of math anxiety) can distract attention from the task at hand and overload working memory at the same time. Timmerman et al. (2017) nevertheless found no significant associations between math anxiety and arithmetic fluency. With regard to mathematical problem-solving, however, Ramirez et al. (2016) found math anxiety to indeed be a negative predictor of the adoption of advanced problem- solving strategies and a positive predictor of lower achievement for mathematical problem-solving. They also found both the math anxiety and mathematical problem-solving strategies to be strongest for the children with the greatest working memory capacity in the same study. In sum, mathematical difficulties and experiences of failure during the early school years can elicit and increase math anxiety. As
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