Abstract

Math anxiety has been the focus of much psychological and educational research in the past few years, there are many international studies showing that mathematics anxiety is an influence on student’s achievements in school, but little research has been done about this issue in Bahrain. Bahrain is a country in the Arabian Gulf region, its economic development is increasing rapidly, and there is currently a focus on improving the school education outcomes to fit the 21st century requirements. Bahrain started a huge curriculum project in September 2013 by changing the primary math curriculum across the country, and will continue the changes to secondary curriculum in the coming years. These changes are intended to improve mathematics education in the country, since Bahraini math scores have been below the international mean for a very long time. This study attempts to investigate if there is a relationship between anxiety and underachieving in mathematics in Bahrain. The Revised Mathematics Anxiety (R-MANX) Survey (Bursal, 2006) was translated into Arabic and administered to 1352 primary students. The data was analyzed to explore the reliability and validity of the translated survey and the associations between Mathematics anxiety and achievement. This paper reports the findings of the study.

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