Investigation of secondary school students' mathematical anxiety and the attitudes towards learning mathematics

The aim of this research is to study secondary school students' mathematics anxiety and their attitudes towards learning it. The universe of the research is composed of 20015 students who are studying in 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades in 2014-2015 academic year in Adıyaman city center. The sample of the research was intentionally selected in terms of accessibility, Anadolu İmam Hatip High School, Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School (Industry, Technical and Health High Schools) located in Adıyaman in 2014-2015 academic year, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th classes of Anatolian High School. The total number of students is 860. "Research Related Attitudes Scale" developed by Kara (2010) and "Mathematics Anxiety Scale" developed by Bindak (2005) were used in the research. After applying the relevant sampling of the scales, the obtained data was transferred to the computer and the computer package program was used to answer the sub problems. Findings in the evaluations were made according to independent groups t test and one way ANOVA tests. Bonferroni tests were used to determine the groups in which significant differences occurred in the analysis. Pearson moment product correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the two scales used in the study. At the end of the research, there were no significant differences in secondary school students' attitudes towards learning in terms of grade level, parental education status, and the status of benefit from internet . Significant differences were found in terms of gender, the success of secondary school mathematics teachers, and the availability of private tutoring or training center support in secondary school. In mathematics anxiety situations, there were no significant differences in terms of gender, parental education status, and the status of benefit from internet, but there were significant differences in terms of grade level, success of mathematics teachers in secondary school and private tutoring or training center support in secondary school. There were significant relationships between math anxiety and learning anxiety, expectation from learning and openness to learning dimensions. Various suggestions have been developed as a result of these findings. Keywords: Mathematics teaching, anxiety, math anxiety, attitudes towards learning, openness to learning.