5th and 8th grade pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions of the relationships between teaching methods, classroom ethos, and positive affective attitudes towards learning mathematics in Japan

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Pupils’ sense Ofsecurity

For the purpose of this thesis, pupils’ lack of sense of security is interpreted as anxiety.
The literature considered therefore relates to pupils’ anxiety in learning. Pupils’ anxiety
can have either a facilitating or debilitating role on an individuals’ performance (Yerkes et
al., 1908, cited in Whitman, 1985). The Yerkes-Dodson Law assumes that optimal
performance results from moderate levels of arousal. Too low levels result in a lack of
concentration; too high interfere with processing. However, these effects are mediated
by the difficulty of the task and the individual’s sensibility to arousal levels. For instance,
Chapin (1989) found that anxiety facilitated the academic performance of high anxiety,
high performance students but debilitated high anxiety, low performance students.

Some literature proposes that anxiety is not a single dimension, but rather consists of
several distinctive dimensions. Liebert et al. (1967) postulated two components of
anxiety, the cognitive (worry) component and the motivational-arousal ∞mponent. The
cognitive (worry) component is associated with negative task expectations and negative
self-evaluations towards the task. The motivational-arousal component involves
fluctuation in the level of psychological functioning and negative feelings such as
uneasiness, tension, and nervousness. Some literature shows that there is both a trait of
test anxiety, which ascribes anxiety to a stable trait-like individual difference, and a state
of test anxiety, which ascribes anxiety to specific factors across situations. A highly trait-
anxious person is likely to experience state-anxiety more severely and in a broader
range of situations than less trait-anxious persons (see Covington, 1992). State anxiety
was believed as being more predictive of task performance than trait anxiety (Cattell et
al., 1966; Spielberger, 1972), but Eysenck (1979) emphasised the negative effect of an
individuals’ trait-like anxiety on motivation and task performance. Eysenck (1979) argued
that the motivational component of anxiety enhanced the quality of performance by
inducing increased effort and attention when the probability of success was high.
However, high-anxiety individuals tended to set difficult goals, which reduced the
probability ofsuccess, and as a result, tended to lessen motivation.

Dreger et al. (1957) defined mathematics anxiety as a ‘syndrome of emotional reaction
to arithmetic and mathematics’. Richardson et al. (1972) defined mathematics anxiety as
‘feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the

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