An application in a real class and school environment to reduce the mathematical anxiety levels of secondary school students

The basic aim of this study is to investigate whether the level of math anxiety of students who have math anxiety can be reduced with the application for increasing mathematics achievement in real class and school environment or not. As the relevant literature related to the math anxiety was investigated, it is observed that the scanning method was employed in most of the conducted studies and the current situation is tried to be put forward. In this present study, In this study, this application was realized in real school environment by using action research method and results were evaluated. The research was carried out in a middle school with low socio-economic and academic achievement in a medium-sized province in terms of population of Eastern Anatolia Region in the 2018-2019 academic year. The application continued for eight weeks. The study group consisted of all of the sixth-grade students and two students with high level of math anxiety selected among them. The qualitative and quantitative data in the research were collected with the mathematical anxiety scale, e-school course scores, general trial test results, researcher observation and daily notes and structured protocols. In the analysis of the quantitative data the gathered scores were converted to standard z-scores, then these z scores were interpreted on graph. The qualitative data were analysed and interpreted using the descriptive analysis. Finally, the results gathered from the qualitative and quantitative data were interpretted together. Accordingly, at the end of the application, it was found that both of the students' mathematical achievement levels increased. It was observed that the math anxiety level of one of the students decreased; on the other hand, although the anxiety score of other students increased, anxiety level did not change. Consequently, it was found that as the mathematical achievement increases, math anxiety decreases. In addition, the increase in the mathematical achievements of the students contributes positively to the achievemement in science and social studies courses which have direct or indirect relationship with mathematics. This study, negative beliefs and attitudes such as anxiety and inadequacy can be changed by increasing the success of mathematics courses; thus, the cycle between failure, inadequacy and anxiety can be broken.