Investigation of high school students' matematics anxiety and cognitive flexibility

Many courses are important in the educational life of students, but mathematics course has a critical importance in shaping the future of students. For this reason, pressures can negatively affect students' educational lives, especially their mathematics achievement. In this study, the relationship between mathematics anxiety and cognitive flexibility, which are factors that negatively affect students' mathematics achievement, was examined in terms of various variables. In this study, it was aimed to examine the extent to which mathematics anxiety and cognitive flexibility of high school students differ in terms of gender, grade level, number of siblings, academic achievement in mathematics course and the relationship between mathematics anxiety and cognitive flexibility. In line with the aim of the study, the research was designed in the survey model. The population of the study consists of eighteen high schools in the centre of Kırşehir Province in the 2023-2024 academic year, including five Anatolian Imam Hatip High Schools with a total enrolment of 1642, seven Anatolian High Schools with a total enrolment of 3977, five Vocational and Technical Anatolian High Schools with a total enrolment of 2323, and one Science High School with a total enrolment of 417, and a total of 8359 students studying in these high schools. Approximately 500 high school students to be determined by simple random sampling among these high schools constitute the sample of this study. 'Personal Information Form', 'Cognitive Flexibility Scale' and 'Mathematics Anxiety Scale' were used as data collection tools in the research process. The research data were collected by the researcher. Within the scope of the research, descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation), unrelated samples t test for the difference according to demographic characteristics, one-way analysis of variance (One Way ANOVA) for unrelated measurements, Pearson product moment correlation coefficient analysis for the relationship were used to analyse the data. The results of the research were presented in line with the findings obtained. In addition, according to simple linear regression analysis test, high school students' cognitive flexibility predicted their mathematics anxiety in a moderate and significant way (R = .451, R² = .203, p < .01). Cognitive flexibility explained approximately 20% of the total variance in mathematics anxiety. According to the mathematical model obtained as a result of regression analysis (Mathematics Anxiety = 158.301 - 1.403 Cognitive Flexibility), as students' cognitive flexibility levels increase, their mathematics anxiety decreases. In line with these findings, it is recommended that mathematics curricula should be enriched with activities that will improve students' cognitive flexibility (multiple solution paths, error analysis, etc.) and future experimental studies should be conducted to test the causal direction of this relationship.