Math Anxiety, Math Performance, Peer Effects, and Gender: Evidence From 69 Countries

초록

Math anxiety poses a significant challenge to mathematics achievement, particularly during adolescence-a period marked by heightened peer comparison and gendered social expectations. Drawing on data from the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study analyzes responses from 371,019 15-year-olds across 69 countries to investigate how individual performance, peer academic achievement, peer math anxiety, and gender interact to shape students' math anxiety. Using both ordinary least squares and multilevel modeling, we find robust support for multiple hypotheses: Math anxiety is negatively associated with individual performance and positively associated with peer performance and peer anxiety. Notably, these peer-related effects are significantly stronger among girls. Exploratory heterogeneity analyses indicate that individual traits and school context can influence these relationships. Moreover, although average math anxiety tends to be lower in high-income and high-performance countries, a student's relative math performance (vis-& agrave;-vis one's peers) appears to matter more in high-income countries, especially in European countries. These findings build on the existing literature that math anxiety is not only an individual emotional response but also a socially embedded phenomenon. Enhancing students' mathematical competence and alleviating anxiety call for classroom- and school-level interventions that promote equitable and supportive learning environments. This has important implications for policy, pedagogy, and future research.

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