The examination of the relationship between metacognitive awareness and math anxiety levels of the pre-service primary school teachers

In this study, the relationship between metacognition awareness of pre-service primary school teachers and math anxiety levels was analyzed. The effects of gender, of the university programmes and departments that are attended, of the qualification of the high school that is graduated from and lastly of the department on pre-service primary school teachers metacognitive awareness and math anxiety. The research group of the study consisted of 616 pre-service primary school teachers in Dumlupınar University, Usak University, Agrı Ibrahim Cecen University, Kilis 7 Aralık University, Ataturk University -Department of Primary School Teaching- totally of 171, 164, 82, 101 and 98 3rd and 4th grade undergraduate students respectively as from 2013-2014 year of study. In the study, for data collection, The Mathematics Anxiety Scale towards Teachers and Teacher Candidates (MAS-T) and Meta-Cognition Questionnaire (MCQ) were used. MAS-T was developed by Uldas (2005). MCQ which was first developed by Cartwright Hatton and Wells in 1997 and formed shortly in 30 items by Wells and Cartwright Hatton in 2004 were used. In addition to this, the Meta-Cognition Scale (MCS-30) which was adapted to Turkish by Tosun and Irak (2008). Also, various demographic data concerning the research group was gathered by applying "Personal Information Form". Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation Analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis were used for analyzing the relationships of the numeric data. Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis H test and t-test were applied for the analysis of the differentiation of numeric data according to demographic variables. According to research results, it was observed that there is a positive relationship between the metacognitive awareness and math anxiety in pre-service primary school teachers. Negative metacognition differed according to gender and negative metacognition levels for women were higher than those for men's. On the other hand, metacognitive awareness did not differ according to their university department, grade, or their high school. Also, the math anxiety did not differ according to their gender, grade or their high school, but it differed significantly according to their university and high school. The findings were discussed in relation to previous research. Key words: Anxiety, math anxiety, metacognition