About this srcd poster session

---

Panel information
Panel 8. Education, Schooling

Abstract

---

Math achievement is one of the strongest predictors of future academic achievement (Duncan et al., 2007). Affective factors such as math anxiety are important for math learning (Foley et al., 2017). Specifically, math anxiety, defined as fear and apprehension around doing math, is negatively related to children’s math achievement across development (Barroso et al., 2021). In addition to child-level factors (e.g., math anxiety), classroom-level factors also relate to children’s learning. For instance, research has shown that peers’ math abilities at the start of the year positively relate to preschoolers’ and elementary schoolers’ math abilities at the end of the year (Burke & Sass, 2013; Wolf et al., 2021). This relation may stem from children in classrooms with peers who have well-developed abilities having more opportunities to learn from knowledgeable peers (Bandura, 1977; Vygotsky, 1987).
An open question is whether children’s math anxiety may moderate relations between classroom-level abilities and children’s individual achievement. We have two competing hypotheses regarding this relation. According to the compensatory hypothesis (Ramey & Ramey, 1998), being in classrooms with peers who have well-developed math abilities, and therefore potentially interacting with advanced peers could be beneficial for children with high levels of math anxiety. Alternatively, being in classrooms with peers who have well-developed math abilities could be detrimental for children with high levels of math anxiety if they compare themselves to peers who are more skilled than themselves (i.e., debilitating comparisons hypothesis). These comparisons are shown to negatively relate to children’s math learning when students believe that they cannot realistically elevate their abilities to a higher level (Wehrens et al., 2010).
This secondary analysis will examine the following pre-registered questions: (1) to what extent does classroom-level math achievement at start of the year (i.e., fall) relate to early elementary school children’s math achievement at the end of the year (i.e., spring)? and (2) does the strength of the relation between classroom-level math achievement and children’s math achievement vary depending on math anxiety at the child-level? We will use an existing dataset of approximately 2750 children in the United States, ranging from kindergarten to third grade, nested in 250 classrooms.
To answer each question, a multi-level regression model predicting elementary school children’s math achievement in spring will be run using BLIMP 3.0. (Keller & Enders, 2020). Both models will include child-level demographic variables, children’s math abilities and anxiety in fall, and instructional time in math as covariates (see Table 1 for measures). For Question 1, the main predictor will be classroom-level math achievement in fall. We hypothesize that classroom-level math achievement in fall will positively relate to children’s math achievement in spring. For Question 2, we will add an interaction term between children’s math anxiety in fall and classroom-level math achievement in fall to the initial model as the main predictor (see Table 2 for proposed models). A positive coefficient for this interaction term would support the compensatory hypothesis, whereas a negative coefficient would support the debilitating comparisons hypothesis. Implications for research and educational applications will be discussed.

Author information

Author	Role
Can Çarkoğlu, Purdue University	Presenting author
Colleen Ganley, Florida State University	Non-presenting author
Robert J. Duncan, Colorado State University	Non-presenting author
David J. Purpura, Purdue University	Non-presenting author
Sarah H. Eason, Purdue University	Non-presenting author

⇦ Back to session