MATHEMATICAL ANXIETY: MATHEMATICAL ANXIETY: CONTRIBUTIONS OF SOME BRAZILIAN STUDIES

contribuições de alguns estudos brasileiros

Abstract

Aversion and fear of mathematics is known in the literature as mathematics anxiety, which is a negative behavioral response to activities involving mathematics and which affect the student's cognitive, physiological and behavioral state. In this sense, this article seeks to analyze and discuss what some Brazilian studies report about mathematical anxiety and for this purpose, a mapping of productions published in bibliographic databases was carried out. The criteria for selecting the studies were the presence, in the title, abstract and keywords, of the descriptor “mathematical anxiety and that they had open access to the publication. The results reveal that studies of mathematical anxiety are being carried out in Brazil in areas such as psychology, neurosciences and genetics; and, to a large extent, they are based on behavior, affective and cognitive domains associated with the phenomenon of mathematical anxiety, factors more related to the field of Psychology. Therefore, it is necessary to take studies also to the field of Education, especially Mathematics Education, since it is the teachers who teach mathematics who will often encounter students with mathematics anxiety in the classroom and who, because they are unaware of the topic, they can attribute the difficulties to a lack of interest and lack of motivation on the part of the student.