Using the Flipped Classroom Instructional Approach to Foster a Mathematics-Anxious-Friendly Learning Environment

Introduction

“Mathematics anxiety” is a term that has been tossed around by students and teachers alike since the 1950’s. While it is undisputable that many students suffer from mathematics anxiety, its nature remains largely unknown to mathematics teachers. Furthermore, the current established remedies largely address mathematics anxiety as an individual manifest, with only temporary relief for students and without accounting for the social learning environment. This is a reflection of an unclear understanding of this widespread phenomenon, resulting in students developing unpleasant feelings and distaste toward the subject of mathematics as a whole.

The aim of this book chapter is to examine the nature and characteristics of mathematics anxiety learning, and to provide instructional implications for highly-mathematics-anxious learners which are informed by lived experience. Through the flipped classroom instructional approach, one could implement these implications that are often overlooked with the traditional approach. The discussion of mathematics anxiety is from the author’s dissertation research on the Mathematics Anxiety Learning Phenomenon (MALP), a hermeneutic phenomenological study using Wilber’s Integral Model as the underpinning framework. Through the lived experience data, hermeneutic themes were developed, which can be capitalized upon using the flipped classroom approach to foster a mathematics-anxious-friendly learning environment. Through the examination of these themes and the instructional implications, one can argue that the flipped approach could be beneficial to students who are highly mathematics-anxious. This book chapter will be organized in the following manner:

• 1.

  Past research on mathematics anxiety,

• 2.

  The hermeneutic phenomenological study on mathematics anxiety: its methods, data, results, and the interpretation of the lived experience,

• 3.

  The implications for mathematics-anxious friendly instruction and how the flipped classroom approach has great potential to foster a more positive learning environment, and

• 4.

  The chapter will conclude with an instructional example on solving systems of linear equations of two variables, using the flipped classroom instructional approach to demonstrate how an improved learning environment could be mathematics-anxious friendly.