Abstract:

Many high school students feel mathematics test anxiety (Chishti & Rana, 2021). For example, Putwain and Symes (2010) reported more mathematics test anxiety than in English or science. Mohd et al. (2019) indicated that one method to reduce mathematics test anxiety is Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT). Specifically, they found that administering multiple CAT-based tests as practice before a mathematics test over three weeks or longer decreased mathematics test anxiety.

There is an increasing demand for individualized e-learning systems (Tinh et al., 2020). In Japan, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) (2020) indicated that providing individualized and optimized learning is necessary by using one computer per student. CAT is one of the promising methods being used to achieve the goal. CAT combines computer-based testing and item response theory (IRT) to grasp the comprehension status of examinees’ by determining the appropriate questions for each examinee and efficiently changing the difficulty level of subsequent questions (Mitsunaga, 2017). In other words, we expect that the ability of the examinees coincides with the difficulty of the CAT problems and that the CAT is suitable for individualized and optimized learning.

However, while Japanese universities have LMS learning environments, Japanese high schools do not have such environments. In addition, despite needing individualized and optimized learning, CAT is not widely used in Japanese high schools. We need to develop the CAT to reduce mathematics test anxiety in Japanese high schools.

This study aims to develop and evaluate the CAT to reduce mathematics test anxiety in Japanese high schools.
We have developed the CAT with the following features.
(1) each question in Mathematics I, A, II, B, III, and C is designed and implemented by the New Courses of Study for Senior High Schools (MEXT, 2018),
(2) the answer format for each question is 5-choice,
(3) each question is non-skippable, non-terminable, has a time limit, and is posed one at a time.

The students can check as follow: the 5-point scale of estimated ability, the standard normal distribution of the item pool, the percentage of correct answers overall and for each unit (% and radar chart), and the number of attempts.

We asked students to use the CAT and compared their mathematics test anxiety before and after using the CAT to evaluate it. We practice the following procedure. We survey 122 junior and high school students in Tokyo, Japan. The students are familiar with the operation of ICT devices. Also, all teachers and students have iPad. We developed the pre-mid-post questionnaire. The mathematics test anxiety Questionnaire has 23 items (Friedman & Bendas-Jacob, 1997). We are going to conduct the pre-mid-post questionnaire, adding this questionnaire. This questionnaire concluded 6-point Likert scale. We are going to conduct the mid-questionnaire, adding career awareness, CAT system usability, and interface evaluation. We decided to take the mid-questionnaire one month after taking the pre-questionnaire. In addition, we are also going to try to determine the student’s mathematics ability level through extensive use of the CAT system.

Finally, we expect a reduction in mathematics test anxiety over several months and a continuous improvement in mathematics ability level for each unit over several months.

Keywords:

Computerized Adaptive Test, Mathematics Test Anxiety, Item Response Theory.