LS&T Study Blog

Measurable:

Problem Solving Accuracy (ACC) - Domain Competence ((Is this really accuracy or is this something else))

Working Memory Capacity (WMC) - Operation Span Task

Response Time (RT)

Efficiency (Ratio of accuracy to response time)

Flexibility

Self Report:

Demographics [things that describe you as a person like age, gender, sex, year in school, amount of school completed, race, ethnicity, number of a type of course completed, etc. These can be really general or super specific.]

Math Anxiety - Revised Math Anxiety Rating Scale (RMARS; Plake & Parker, 1982)

Self-Efficacy Beliefs [how confident you are in your ability to do something correctly] - [”Self-efficacy, the belief in one's ability to execute courses of action to achieve desired results (Bandura, 1986)“]

Metacognition [thinking about how you think and use of strategies] - State Metacognitive Inventory (SMI; O’Neil & Abedi, 1996)

I’m Not Sure If They Measure or Not But Might Be Neat:

Cognitive Load [how much effort you have to put in to do a task] or Perceived Cognitive Load [how much effort you think you have to put in to do a task]

Anxiety sensitivity [how much attention do you pay to how anxious you feel]

Source: “I think I can, but I’m afraid to try”: The role of self-efficacy beliefs and mathematics anxiety in mathematics problem-solving efficiency by Bobby Hoffman, 2010

My Thoughts: I’ve seen this in the students that I’ve tutored. They know how to do the work, but when it comes time to do the homework or take a test they freeze up and preform really poorly even though I know they know how to do the work. And then they see how bad they did and it drives their self-confidence down.

“Teachers and students with high mathematics anxiety, irrespective of ability, perceive they are less competent than individuals with lower mathematics anxiety (Ashcraft & Moore, 2009).”

Same source

My Thoughts: Even if they know how to do it, if they’re super anxious they’ll think they’re less competent than someone who doesn’t know how to do it but also doesn’t have anxiety about it. Story of my life; thanks Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. x-x

“Self-perceptions may result in lower achievement outcomes and a predetermined attitude towards mathematics which can influence dispositions towards learning (Ferla, Valcke & Cai, 2009; Peterson, Fennema, Carpenter, & Loef, 1989). For example, Meece, Wigfield, and Eccles (1990) used structural equation modeling to test the relations among grades, perceptions of mathematics ability, and performance and value perceptions on mathematics anxiety. Performance expectations had the strongest direct effects on anxiety leading to the conclusion that “students’ interpretations of outcomes, not the outcomes themselves have the strongest effects on affective reactions” (p. 68).“

Same source

Source: “I think I can, but I'm afraid to try”: The role of self-efficacy beliefs and mathematics anxiety in mathematics problem-solving efficiency by Bobby Hoffman, 2010