Predictors of Mathematics Anxiety among Naga Adolescent Students in Kohima

“Mathematics anxiety” was first detected in the late 1950's. Dreger and Aiken (1957) noticed undergraduate students reacting emotionally to arithmetic and mathematics. They introduced for the first time a new term 'Mathematics Anxiety1 to describe students' attitudinal difficulties with mathematics. It was recognized as a problem as early as 1970, since then it has become a global problem among students. Mathematics anxiety has become most researched topic among psychologists and educationists for almost 40 years. The long school administrative experience of the researcher and the class 10 Nagaland Board of School Education results (2007-2011) are self explanatory to show that mathematics anxiety among school students are on the rise. A study on “Predictors of Mathematics Anxiety among Naga Adolescent Students in Kohima” Nagaland (2011) was a felt need to find out whether Numerical Ability, Study Skills and General Anxiety be the predictors of mathematics anxiety among Naga adolescent students in Kohima. The study was also intended to find out whether there would be gender difference on Numerical Ability, Study Skills, General Anxiety and Mathematics Anxiety. Random Sampling method was used to choose the institutions and also sections of class 9 and class 10 to avoid bias and disparity. The sample selected for the present study included 584 students (291 girls and 293 boys of classes 9 and 10) from six private unaided co-educational Higher Secondary Schools in Kohima Nagaland. Multiple Regressions, Path Analysis, 2X2 factorial ANOVA was used for the analysis of the data. Numerical ability and Study skills had significant inverse relationship with cognitive dimension of mathematical anxiety. This proved the fact that the greater the numerical ability and study skills the lesser the cognitive component of mathematics anxiety. Both Numerical ability and Study skills contributed inversely to the behavioural aspect of mathematics anxiety. Numerical ability and Study skills showed significant negative correlation with somatic manifestations of anxiety. Numerical ability as well as study skills showed significant inverse relationship with social aspect of mathematics anxiety. All the predictors such as Numerical Ability, Study Skills, and General Anxiety have significantly contributed to mathematics anxiety. Though there was no significant gender difference with regard to Numerical Ability but boys differed significantly from girls on mathematics anxiety. The common belief that boys are superior to girls on numerical ability was not accepted and there was no significant gender difference on numerical ability. Mathematics anxiety is real, and is present in all age levels regardless of their mathematical ability (Betz, 1978). It is a 'learned' emotional response to one or more of the following: participating in a mathematics class, listening to lecture, working through a mathematics problem, and discussing mathematics therefore this learned behaviour could be 'unlearned'. Naga Adolescent students in Kohima found to be having moderate mathematics anxiety, added to that general anxiety and mathematics anxiety were more among girls than boys.