To overcome the fear of maths

Several students dislike mathematics as a subject and carry this dislike into their adulthood. While mild dislike towards a subject is nothing new, we are coming across a growing number of cases where this dislike has grown into hatred or fear with severe bouts of anxiety.

In 2019, researchers from UK’s Cambridge University interviewed 2,700 primary and secondary school students in the UK and Italy to know more about maths anxiety and its causes. They found that children as young as six experience fear, rage and despair as a result of 'mathematics anxiety', a condition which can cause physical symptoms and behaviour problems in class.

The researchers noted that maths anxiety should be treated as a real concern because of the damage it does to a child's learning. They also linked it to the growing maths crisis in the UK.

This problem is not limited to the Western countries alone. Speaking at a recent event, CBSE's Controller of Examinations Sanyam Bhardwaj remarked that fear of maths among Indian school students was a matter of concern and that CBSE had initiated several steps to make maths learning interesting and enjoyable. Even the New Education Policy focuses on developing logical and higher-order thinking skills in children of all age groups.

Why fear?

There are many reasons for students to develop maths anxiety. Classroom teaching is a major factor. Innovative methods of teaching can either make maths interesting for students or trigger fear for the subject in them. This apart, many middle and high school students fear maths as they lack clarity in concepts studied in lower classes. Hence, it is critical that the students learn maths in a proper way right from the beginning.

To counter this maths anxiety, especially among the generation of gadget-friendly school-goers, there has been a growing experimentation with pedagogy and new technology-based learning approaches including gamification of learning.

Gamification

In simple terms, gamification is the application of video game design elements and mechanisms in conveying academic concepts. Playful and exciting elements of multi-media are embedded in the pedagogy making maths less stressful and fun.

Of late, some apps related to maths are using gamification and they try to engage students through reward points, challenges, scores, badges, stickers or stars. These motivate the students and offer healthy competition. Further, as there are only carrots and no sticks in a well-designed gamified learning environment, children have fewer reasons to feel fearful or anxious and this brings positive behaviour changes in children.

For developing fluency in maths, a student needs regular practice and repetition, and gamification helps here too. It attracts students to keep coming back to learn more and enables them to tackle and solve complex problems.

However, gamification can act only as an enabler to learn maths and it cannot substitute the actual teaching or learning process. Also, every child might not find gamified learning engaging, and the level of interest might vastly differ among individuals. In such cases, it would be prudent to ensure that other pedagogical techniques are also used effectively.

Controlling screen time

When it comes to gamification, a cause of concern for many parents is an increase in a child's screen time. As this is a valid concern, instruction designers of gamified learning can mitigate the risks by embedding time-based controls in the learning scheme.

(The author is the co-founder of a math learning app)