| Academic achievement in mathematics is a factor of many different variables. While some individuals excel mathematically regardless of their surroundings, others seem limited to performing well only under specified conditions. Still others seem mathematically challenged in all their endeavors, feeling alone in their feelings of anxiety toward math. An enhanced contextual mathematics curriculum can be created by pulling out the mathematics already present in a non-mathematics curriculum and pointing the mathematics out to the students. Students may approach math in a more open way outside a traditional mathematics classroom environment, what could conceivably be considered a less threatening environment for the math-anxious. Personal attitudes toward social interdependence as well as the teaching style (cooperative, competitive, or individualistic) used in the classroom could also play an important role in the effectiveness of the enhanced contextual math curriculum. The following is the results of a study of the nationwide implementation of an enhanced contextual math curriculum investigating the relationship among attitudes toward social interdependence, math anxiety, and performance. The study, a substudy of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education's Math Study, had the purpose of attempting to better understand the relationships between a student's cooperative, competitive, and individualistic predispositions (the three parts of social interdependence theory), math anxiety, and classroom instructional type (cooperative, competitive, individualistic, or some combination of the three), and mathematics achievement within enhanced classroom environments. A secondary purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between interdependence predispositions, motivation (intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and test anxiety), and math anxiety. |
