Submitted To :

Fairuz Rahman

Lecturer in HRM in Business Administration

�Mathematics Anxiety and Attitude Level�of Students of the Faculty of Economics�and Business Administrator; The Turkey Model������

Introduction

Economic stability of a country is related with the education level of the economists in that country. The higher quality of education economists have , the more contribution they make to their countries economy. The faculties of Economics and Business Administration take on the mission of educating the economists in Turkey. Many attributes of these faculties give a direction to Turkish economy. Because of this, the quality of education in those faculties is important. The mission of the faculty of Economics and Business Administration is to develop national business leaders with management knowledge, skill sand values necessary to work efficiently and responsibly in a changing global economy.

To this end, the faculty, staff and students work together to promote professionalism and integrity in all their graduates, attributes that will prepare their students for real roles of leadership and accomplishment, and make them stand out among business school graduates . The faculty of Economics and Business Administration is making a significant contribution to business and the professions through its teaching, research and connections with the business world. Through their extensive range of quality programs for under-graduate students, these faculties can be leader in the broad discipline areas of Finance, Economics, and Management .

Economic problems center around the utilization of limited resources to provide goods and services for society. As a social science, economics is concerned with people in their roles as economic decision makers. Economists study how business and personal decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty and incomplete information, and they provide insight into problems involving both short- and long-term planning, such as investment and savings decisions. A strong grounding in both theoretical and applied aspects of economics allows students to use their knowledge to understand economic behavior and provides a basis for evaluating economic policy. The finance discipline can be classified into three areas: managerial, investments, and markets and institutions. This business field is for students who want to understand the financial implications inherent in virtually any business decision. It is doubtless that mathematics education is very important for careers of graduates of these departments. There are important studies about the math anxiety and math attitude in literature. There can be a relationship among the math anxiety, math attitude and mathematics success of the students of the faculty of Economics and Business Administration. Examination of this relationship is needed for higher quality in mathematics education in these faculties.

Mathematics Anxiety and Attitude

Anxiety is an emotional state of individuals in which people feel uneasy, apprehensive, or fearful. Math anxiety is a feeling of intense frustration or helplessness about one’s ability to do mathematics . Math anxiety has been defined as feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations . Math anxiety usually comes from negative experiences in working with teachers, tutors, classmates, parents or siblings. Other times the anxiety comes from stress or a personal problem that was going on at the same time s/he was learning a particular concept. Mathematics anxiety is a concept that has stimulated increasing interest from researchers since the late 1970s (Reyes 1984). An often quoted definition of mathematics anxiety is that of Richardson and Suinn (1972) who describe it as “feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations”. The symptoms of math anxiety are : Panic , Paranoia , Passive and Lack of confidence .

Math anxiety is a pervasive problem in today’s society. Studies have shown math anxiety is most often learned in school situations. Then school situations maintain it. People’s intrusive worries about math temporarily disrupt mental processes needed for doing arithmetic and drag down math competence. “Math anxiety soaks up working-memory resources and makes it harder to learn mathematics, probably beginning in middle school,” Ashcraft says.

They ran three experiments, each with 50 to 60 college students. Experiments included roughly equal numbers of male and female students who cited low, moderate, or high levels of math anxiety on a questionnaire. These three experiments found that high math anxiety translates into poorer performance on an unconventional number-manipulation task that also taxed working memory.

Anxiety manifests itself in different ways. Some students are jittery; somelook calm and resigned to poor performance. Some race through tests and assignments, others avoid as much as they can. But however it manifestsitself, math anxiety is truly unpleasant.

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Attitude is another important concept about learning mathematics. Attitudes affect everything that you attempt. They affect your relations with other people and your openness to new experiences. If your attitude toward a task is positive, you will most likely enjoy the process of doing it and look for opportunities to do it. If your attitude is negative, you will most likely avoid or delay the occasion of doing it.

Little consensus exists in the research literature concerning the relationship between attitude toward mathematics and achievement in mathematics. To assess the magnitude of this relationship, the researchers conducted a meta analysis to integrate and summarize the findings from several primary studies. The statistical results of these studies were transformed into a common effect size measure, correlation coefficient. This relationship was found to be dependent on a number of variables: grade, ethnic background, sample selection, sample size, and date of publication. Gender did not have a significant effect on the relationship, nor were there any significant interactions among gender, grade, and ethnic background.

Unfortunately, some high school students do not have mastery of basic arithmetic. And certainly it makes it challenging to teach students algebra, for example, if they do not have a strong foundation of basic skills. However, to continue to repeat this kind of arithmetic with them at the expense of letting them deal with challenging mathematics is likely to lead to their never progressing much further.

Randhawa, Beamer, and Lundberg (1993) found that generalized math self-efficacy mediated the effect of various math attitudes on math achievement. Kabiri and Kiamanesh’s (2004) study was designed in order to investigate the role of personal variables such as math self-efficacy, math attitude, mathematics anxiety and prior math achievement on students’ math achievement using a causal path analytic model and to identify the direct and indirect effects of these variables on each other.

The purpose of the Kiamanesh, Hejazi and Esfahani’s (2004) study was to investigate the predictive and mediational role of self-efficacy beliefs and to identify the direct and indirect effects of mathematics self-efficacy, math self-concept, perceived usefulness of mathematics, math anxiety and gender on math performance. Results from path analysis revealed that math self efficacy was more predictive of math performance than was math self-concept, perceived usefulness of mathematics, or gender.

Aim of The Research

The major purpose of this study was to determine changes in mathematics

anxiety and attitudes from several universities in Turkey. A secondary purpose

was to determine whether these changes were dependent on age, gender, class

level, and mathematics success of the students. The following questions have

been asked for these purposes;

1. What is the mathematics anxiety level of the students in Business

Administration, Economics, and Public Finance departments of the faculties

of Economics and Business Administration?

2. Which dimensions are effective on attitudes of students of Social

Sciences towards mathematics?

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3. Do mathematics anxiety levels and mathematics attitudes of stu-

dents in Business Administration, Economics, and Finance departments vary

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according to the following;

a) gender, b) department, c) class level, d) general success

level, e) mathematics success level

Importance of The Research

Developing positive attitudes towards math classes and decreasing the level of anxiety vary depending on various factors. However, the real factor in the classroom is the teacher. S/he possesses an important position as his/her education method is characteristic in emphasizing the success and transforming failure into a positive state in terms of determining the attitude and anxiety level of the students towards math classes. Therefore, it is important that the teacher uses appropriate education methods on his/her students so as not to cause them experience mathematics anxiety problems. This research bears importance in terms of determining mathematics anxiety problems of students of administrative sciences who will also make use of mathematics in their future business lives when they graduate. In this context, this research may initiate some other studies for the rearrangement of education approaches in teaching mathematics in a way to eliminate mathematics anxiety problems and to develop mathematics attitudes of students.

Assumptions and Limitations of The Research

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It is accepted that students who participated in the research reflected their real feelings and opinions while giving answers to questions included in the measurement tools. This research is limited to students of Business Administration, Economics , and Finance departments of 9 state universities located in different geographical regions of Turkey in 2003-2004 Academic Year Fall Term.

Sample of The Research

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The research field is comprised of students enrolled in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4^th years of Business Administration, Economics, and Finance departments of Faculties of Economics and Administrative Sciences of state universities in Turkey in the 2003-2004 Academic Year Fall Term. As it would be time consuming and unfeasible to contact and include all students currently attending social sciences branches of 50 active state universities in the related period, each of these state universities located in seven different geographic regions has been accepted as a stratum. Considering that mathematics anxiety and attitudes of students from 9 state universities, which were selected by simple random sampling method, may vary according to their departments, a gradual sampling method depending on strata was performed by attaching a sub stratum to each department. The volume of sampling was determined so as to include 1620 persons comprising of 15 students from 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th years of each department. However, 1440 students out of 1620 have been reached.

Data Collection Tools

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Business Administration, Economics and Finance undergraduate students were applied a three-section questionnaire form at the stage of data collection. Mathematics Anxiety Scale, adapted to Turkish culture by Erol with reference to ‘Math Anxiety Rating Scale –MARS-A’ developed by Richardson and Suinn (1972), was utilized for measurement of students’ mathematics anxiety Levels. Mathematics anxiety scale is a fivefold Likert-type scale including 45 items whose validity and reliability studies have been completed (Erol 1989). Participants are asked to choose one of the five situations which are ‘always’, ‘frequently’, ‘sometimes’, ‘rarely’ and ‘never’ for each of the 45 items in the MARS-A anxiety scale. The answers are scored from 5 to 1 respectively while calculating the scale scores. High scores indicate high level of mathematics anxiety and low scores indicate low level of anxiety as per the total score results. In this study average anxiety scores of subjects are taken as basis instead of total anxiety scores, and anxiety levels are classified as ‘low level of anxiety’, ‘medium level of anxiety’ and ‘high level of anxiety’ according to average anxiety scores obtained. The inner consistency coefficient determined by the alpha correlation which is a generalized form of 20 formulas of Kuder Richards is .91. Another inner consistency test of the scale is performed by item – total score correlations technique. Item – total score correlations are between the range of .21 and .66 except for two items.

Data Analysis

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Mathematics anxiety levels of students attending faculties of Economics and Administrative Sciences of state universities in Turkey were examined according to their genders, departments, class levels, educational background of parents, type of graduated high school, mathematics success and general academic success. Independent samples t test was used for analyzing whether average scale scores obtained by Mathematics Anxiety Scale and Mathematics Attitude Scale varied according to gender. One-way variance analysis was utilized for testing the difference between average scores of Mathematics Anxiety Scale and Mathematics Attitude Scale, and class levels, educational background of parents, type of graduated high school, level of mathematics success and general level of academic success. Tukey Test was also applied for determining the groups among which there was difference on condition that the obtained F value was considered significant.

Results

Data obtained by applying the questionnaire form comprised of Mathematics Anxiety Scale, Mathematics Attitude Scale and Personal Information is summarized in the following tables in values of frequency and percentage. Of the 1440 students who have been applied the questionnaire form are 696 are female (48,3%) and 744 are male (51,7%). The average of anxiety scale average scores is 2,4417 and standard deviation is 0,47063 as per the answers given to 45 items prepared in the form of fivefold Likert-type. Anxiety levels are between the following ranges for average scores of anxiety scale; low level of anxiety between 1,00-2,25, medium level of anxiety between 2,26-3,25 and high level of anxiety between 3,26-5,00. Medium level of mathematics anxiety is observed in each of the three departments in terms of percentages (Table 1). (19% for Business Administration, 20,6% for Economics and 1,7% for Finance). High level of mathematics anxiety is mostly observed in students of Finance departments (2,2% for Finance, 1,9% for Business Administration and 1,7% for Economics) and low level of mathematics anxiety is mostly observed in students of Economics departments (13,8% for Finance, 13,1% for Business Administration and 9,7% for Finance).

Students were asked about their mathematics success scores and general academic success (transcript) scores concerning the last term by means of the questionnaire and the following ranges were used; 0-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-74, 75-79, 80-84, 85-89, 90-100. These scores were rearranged so that scores between 0-49 indicate failure, 50-59 indicate low level of success, 60-79 indicate medium level of success and 80-100 indicate high level of success. When mathematics anxiety levels are compared in terms of mathematics success and general aca- demic success as per the rearranged success ranges (Table 2 and Table 3), we may state that high level of mathematics success corresponds to lower levels of mathematics anxiety. For example, 3.1% of Business Administration students are comprised of students who have been highly successful in math classes and who have low level of anxiety at the same time. The situation is more explicit considering success levels and anxiety levels of Finance students. Finance students who fail or who are not successful enough in math classes (2.4% and 7.1%) have higher average level of mathematics anxiety compared to students from other departments.

Discussion

Medium level of mathematics anxiety is observed in each of the three departments in terms of percentages according to the determined anxiety levels . High level of mathematics anxiety is mostly observed in students of Finance departments (2,2% for Finance, 1,9% for Business Administration and 1,7% for Economics) and low level of mathematics anxiety is mostly observed in students of Economics departments. Finance students have higher average anxiety than students of other departments. This may be due to the fact that Finance students have lower scores in university entrance exams when compared to students of other two departments. In other words, we may state that mathematics anxiety of students with lower secondary educational background is higher than the others. However, there is no difference among department in terms of mathematics attitudes of students. Average anxiety scores of 4th-year students are lower than other classes, thus leading to a difference. This may be due to the fact that 4th-year students have already attended all math classes in the previous years and have successfully completed their courses. Averages of mathematics attitudes in terms of class levels show no difference. While type of graduated high schools has no statistically significant effect on mathematics anxiety, average scores of mathematics attitude scale of students graduated from vocational high schools are different from those graduated from Anatolia science high schools. Vocational high school graduates have a more positive attitude towards mathematics when compared to graduates of other high schools. This result may be associated with the fact that weekly math class hours of vocational high schools are considerably lower than those of other school types. It was determined that literacy, which is the lowest level of education, leads to a difference in mathematics anxiety and that students whose fathers are only literate in terms of educational background have high level of mathematics anxiety. It was also determined that mathematics attitudes of students whose fathers are university graduates are different than other students whose fathers are primary school and high school graduates, and that those attitudes of fathers with different educational backgrounds influence mathematics attitudes of students. On the other hand, educational background of mothers only affects mathematics attitudes of students. However, educational background of mothers does not have a significant effect on mathematics anxiety of students. As education levels of mothers increase, mathematics attitudes of students alsoshow a positive increase. These results relating to education levels of parents are quite normal. As education levels of parents increase, they provide more support and attach more importance to the child and his/her education, thus ensuring the child to develop positive attitudes towards math classes. And mathematics anxiety decreases accordingly.