Teaching anxiety and the mathematical representations developed through WebQuest and spreadsheet activities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the effects of mathematical representations developed through WebQuest and spreadsheet activities on the teaching anxiety level of the pre-service elementary school teachers in mathematics. The number of pre-service elementary school teachers involved in this study was seventy three. Thirty five of the participants were in the experimental group and thirty eight of them were in the control group. Whereas the participants in the experimental group developed WebQuest activities during seven weeks of mathematics instruction, the others in the control group did spreadsheets activities in the classroom. The researchers used a Liker-type questionnaire, the Mathematics Teaching Anxiety Scale (MATAS) including twenty three items as pre- and post-tests to investigate teaching anxiety level of the participants in mathematics. After the collection of the data, the researchers used the independent samples t-test and ANCOVA to analyze the quantitative data. The study indicated that there was a statistically significant difference found in terms of teaching anxiety level between the groups favoring the one who developed WebQuests. In other words, developing WebQuest activities reduced the teaching anxiety levels of the pre-service elementary school teachers more than doing spreadsheet activities in mathematics. © 2009 Asian Network for Scientific Information.