eJMT Abstract

While the foundations of future mathematics skills are established within the elementary classroom, many elementary school teachers and preservice teachers have significant anxiety and low confidence in their ability to teach mathematics. This has the potential to impact their effectiveness in teaching and negatively influence their students’ ability to learn mathematics. This study examined whether utilizing the flipped classroom approach to teach a required mathematics course for elementary preservice teachers influenced their level of mathematics anxiety and achievement in the course. Using the MARS-R anxiety rating scale, pre/post course survey results showed that both the flipped and standard classes had significantly decreased mathematics anxiety scores. In contrast, the flipped class showed significantly higher overall achievement on overall course grades. Additionally, correlational analyses of the post-course math anxiety survey and the overall course grades showed a significant negative relationship for the traditional class, while no correlational relationship was found for the flipped classroom. This suggests that while the course may have provided a positive experience that helped decrease students’ anxiety, additional opportunities, due to removal of the lecture, may have allowed for the flipped students to learn more over the course of the semester.