engleski

The role of personality, self-concept and defensive motivation in predicting maths anxiety

The goal of this research was to explore the relationships between personality, self- concept, learning strategies and mathematics anxiety in elementary school students. The sample consisted of 511 8th grade students from 36 Croatian elementary schools who completed the Maths Anxiety Scale, Big Five Inventory, the Self-Description Questionnaire-II and measures of self-regulatory learning strategies to assess self-handicapping, defensive pessimism and external attribution of failure. Separate hierarchical regression analyses were conducted by gender to test the predictive power of personality, self-concept and defensive motivational strategies on mathematics anxiety. Results indicate that the variables explained significant variance for both genders (girls R-square = .54 ; boys R- square = .38). Personality, self-concept and motivational strategies were all related to maths anxiety, however, a different pattern emerged with respect to gender. Maths self-concept is significantly negatively related to maths anxiety for both genders, while for boys, maths anxiety is related to low agreeableness and the use of external attribution of failure, and in girls it is predicted by higher neuroticism and defensive pessimism. Results indicate that maladaptive patterns of academic beliefs, motivations and behaviour related to mathematics in Croatian students are to some extent gender-specific, thus calling for specific intervention strategies tailored for boys and girls.

maths anxiety ; personality ; self-concept ; motivation

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