At the end of the 2014/15 year we were parcularly concerned about the students whose atude to maths had remained negave throughout the year and who appeared to have made lile or no progress and, of course, we wanted all the students to do beer. Bandura’s concept of ‘self-­‐efficacy’ (Bandura, 1997) appears to offer a way forward as it indicates how the impact of the messages could be increased. Self-­‐efficacy is the strength of a person’s belief that a parcular goal can be achieved. It is dependent on context; a person may have high self-­‐ efficacy with football but not with plumbing. High self-­‐efficacy is associated with perseverance and success. Bandura (1997) idenfied four key influences on self-­‐efficacy: verbal support from others; peers’/role models’ performance at similar tasks; how increased physiological arousal is interpreted e.g., nervousness before an exam can be interpreted as a sign of incompetence or of being alert and prepared; and, the most important influence in building self-­‐efficacy, success at similar, challenging tasks. Mind-­‐set messages (verbal support) are of limited use if students are not simultaneously experiencing success at challenging maths tasks.


In order to achieve the all important success at challenging tasks it is necessary to become engaged and stay engaged. Staying engaged when ‘stuck’ is what most students find difficult. This could be because experience has taught them that effort doesn’t necessarily bring success. Students indignantly quesoned the mind-­‐set message about ‘keeping going’. Many felt that they had tried hard but it hadn’t worked. At the beginning of the year our students believed that maths was mainly about memorisaon; this belief did not change significantly over the year. The use of memorisaon as a principal strategy is associated with poorer test scores (PISA 2012). It is not enough to give growth mind-­‐set messages without systemacally teaching more effecve maths working pracces and supporng students to adopt them.


Only providing cognive strategies is probably not enough. The highly emoonal nature of maths learning has to be taken into account too. The 2012 PISA study found that 26% of 15 – 16 year olds in the UK suffered from maths anxiety. This percentage is likely to be much higher in the re-­‐sit group. Maths anxiety was probably a significant factor in the students who sll felt negave about maths at the end of the year; about 75% felt negave at the beginning of the year and about 30% at the end (fig 1). High anxiety makes the working memory less efficient and causes avoidance behaviour. Both of these mean less is learned. Students correctly assess that their maths is not up to the required standard but incorrectly aribute the cause to innate incapacity, and so draw the conclusion that effort is pointless.


The majority of students in 2014/2015 reported feeling anxious about maths at the beginning of the year (fig 2) and at the end of the year about 30% were sll feeling inmidated.


So this year (2015/16) I have tried explicitly to acknowledge and address maths anxiety. This was done by introducing Johnston-­‐Wilder and Lee’s ‘growth zone model’ metaphor (Johnston-­‐Wilder et al 2013) to the students at the beginning of the year. The model makes it clear that, although the ‘comfort’ zone is necessary for consolidaon, it is working in the ‘growth’ zone, with its concomitant feelings of uncertainty, doubt and excitement, that is essenal for progress. This approach


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