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. 2023 Apr 6:14:1061027.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1061027. eCollection 2023.

The influences of mindfulness on high-stakes mathematics test achievement of middle school students

Haode Zuo  1 , Lidong Wang  2
Affiliations

The influences of mindfulness on high-stakes mathematics test achievement of middle school students

Haode Zuo et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Research has shown that mindfulness can reduce students' negative emotions associated with high-stakes tests and thereby improve test performance. This study explored the association between mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) and high-risk math test scores of middle school students, which is noticeably slim in the domain of mathematics education, through a mediating process involving math-specific test anxiety and math self-efficacy. Using data from a sample of 45 students, age 12-13, we found empirical support for a significant positive correlation between mindfulness and middle school students' math achievement. Participants listened to a mindfulness audio every other week before a mathematics test. Weekly mathematics test scores, student group discussion data, and in-depth interview data were analyzed to explore how mindfulness affected students' mathematics test performance, which showed a statistically significant improvement after mindfulness compared to mathematics achievement without the intervention. Our results indicate that mindfulness can relieve mathematics anxiety symptoms, including physiological manifestations, test-unrelated thinking and worries, and problem-solving obstacles caused by mathematics anxiety. Also, mindfulness, especially its non-judgmental attitude, positively affects students' mathematical self-efficacy. The current research provides evidence of the mindfulness intervention's efficacy for improving middle school mathematics test performance but also identifies the complexities of implementing it with large numbers of students.

Keywords: high-stakes test; mathematics achievement; mathematics anxiety; mathematics self-efficacy; mathematics test anxiety; meditation; mindfulness; test anxiety.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The average score of students in math test.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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