Abstract:

The rapid development of technology and data analytics has driven many universities to offer more quantitative subjects. However, unlike STEM students, business school students often report fear and worry toward quantitative subjects, i.e., quant anxiety. This may subsequently influence their learning experience and performance, defeating the intent to train students for a technology- and data-driven future (Daker et al., 2021; Dugan & Allen, 2016). A natural response is to set up remedial courses or tutoring to help quant-anxious students along. Yet, such measures may not be effective if students are not psychologically prepared. We contend that when students are already anxious, conditions that allow them to perceive agency are critical. To examine this, we conducted a study in two Finance classes – one undergraduate and one master-level – in a university in Hong Kong. Both classes included students with different levels of quant anxiety. Students filled out a survey before classes commenced, reporting their quant anxiety and growth mindset, i.e., the belief that one can improve their abilities and talents over time through effort, good feedback and learning strategy (Dweck, 2006). They filled out another survey at the end of the semester to record their perceived uncertainty during the learning process and the achievement of their learning objectives. We also recorded their exam scores to capture their performance levels. We obtained usable data from 116 undergraduate and 69 master students.

We first analyzed students’ perceived learning achievement in relations to their quant anxiety. We found a quadratic relationship between the two variables. At very low level of quant anxiety, students perceived low levels of learning; the sense of learning objective achievement rose and then dropped as quant anxiety increased. This suggested that when students perceived low anxiety, they also perceived little learning. Yet, when anxiety was too high, they were overwhelmed and did not perceive learning. A moderate level of anxiety appeared to be the optimal situation. We also found that perceived uncertainty during the learning process mediated this quadratic relationship. That is, quant anxiety made students feel uncertain about their learning process, which in turns, impacted their perceived learning achievement. This is consistent with our argument that quant anxiety was about students’ sense of agency over their learning.

Our analyses of students’ performance in relations to their quant anxiety found a linear and negative relationship between the two variables. The more quant anxious a student was, the lower the performance. This was actually not contradictory to the quadratic relationship discussed above – even when students perceived very little learning, presumably because the materials were too easy, they would still perform well, if not better. However, we did not find a mediating effect for perceived uncertainty. Instead, we found a significant moderating effect for growth mindset, indicating that student who had strong belief that they could improve their quantitative capabilities were less likely to be paralyzed by quant anxiety.

Taken together, our findings suggest that while remedial support can help, educators can improve the learning outcomes of quant-anxious students in quantitative subjects by providing appropriately-phrase feedback and learning strategy to boost their growth mindset.

Keywords:

Growth Mindset, Student Motivation, Math Anxiety.