AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE UNDERSTANDING OF ANXIETY ABOUT MATHEMATICS LEARNING IN THE GRADUATING STUDENTS OF KARACHI

Abstract

Appropriate learning of mathematics is considered to be a critical component for the development of a scientific society. Our curriculum of mathematics courses are well developed and comparable to the curriculum of any other recognized and good university but still the graduating students lack the ability of mathematical understanding. Out of many reasons for the inability of mathematics learning, anxiety has been a neglected topic. The rationale of this research is to dig out the presence of anxiety factors among our students so that in future they can be targeted and confronted properly. For this purpose, a survey based research was conducted for quantitatively finding the mathematics anxiety among the graduating Pakistani students. A sample of 360 students from Electronic Engineering, Business and Media Sciences were taken and data was evaluated using principal component analysis and regression statistics. The research instrument was a questionnaire that was specifically developed for this purpose. Results revealed that two factors are predominantly contributing towards mathematics anxiety in Pakistan ;(1) inability of students to correlate mathematics with practical life and (2) the student's emotional instability towards the subject. These factors successfully explained the total proportion of 54.24%of anxiety for mathematics in the sample. Our qualitative study also showed that remaining can be attributed to the lack of digital tools, boring teaching style, untrusting assessment criteria and non-existence of student’s psychological counselling. This article concludes with recommendations for developing effective mathematics learning progressing towards a scientific society in Pakistan and in similar demographics of South Asia.