Mathematical Anxiety among Primary Education Degree Students in the Post-Pandemic Era: A Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper titled " Mathematical anxiety among Primary Education degree 2 students in the post-pandemic era " is reviewed. A number of related recommendations are presented as follows:

·       The abstract should be recompiled and the purpose and results of the study should be briefly mentioned.

·       It is recommended not to use possessive sentences in the text.

·       It is not sufficiently explained why the research group was divided into two.

·       It is not stated who developed the scale.

·       I think it would be more effective if the analyzes made were stated under separate headings as data tools and analysis, rather than under the heading of variables.

·       Reconstructing the findings will be more understandable. For example, headings other than those describing the tables can be removed.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I think maths anxiety is an important topic for University level students and this paper addresses this issue. I think the paper is clearly written but overall, the reason I wouldn’t accept the paper is that I don’t believe it currently adds to the existing literature on maths anxiety and the statistics are very simple. I also think it doesn’t seem to add to a particular theory/approach. It seems to be mainly descriptive.  I also think there are ethical questions around only having the criteria of men/women for gender – unless other options were offered but not chosen – this could be made clear. Hypothesis one isn’t in a clear direction - The mathematical anxiety of trainee teachers is 176 higher (or lower) in the post-pandemic era with the return to normality.

For me the main issue with the statistics, is that is all separated and there are no controls for any of the factors that can affect maths anxiety and if say gender affects maths anxiety, we then might have all females in one age group, and it is this not age accounting for the findings. I am also not sure of the value of making age a categorical variable as we know at university, we have different ages in different years. I am not sure the value of looking at maths anxiety by humanities or sciences as it doesn’t seem a novel finding that science students have less maths anxiety.

I am also not sure you can make claims about maths anxiety increasing or decreasing post covid when this a one small sample and we are only measuring them at one point in time.

I would advise it needs to be more clear what the unique contribution of this paper is and also what theory/approach it is guided by as it seems too much of a stretch from one small descriptive study to extrapolate to all primary teacher students. 

Really minor- line 161 should be “Taking”.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This paper has been written to address a very important topic that has been a problem for decades: mathematics anxiety. I was really looking forward to reading this paper as this is an area that I am very interested in as I teach both pre-service and in-service primary teachers.

Unfortunately, there is still much work required to improve the readability of this paper. I found it very difficult to read as numbers were listed instead of the authors of research being correctly cited throughout the paper. The Fennema-Shermam scale is appropriate to use with primary pre-service teachers and many researchers around the world have used it. However, you needed to be very clear about how these items were scored as this is important when you discuss your results and conclusions. You also need to indicate which items were re-scored as this is not clear either. In this version of your paper your analysis appears to be incorrect as assumptions will be made as to the scoring of these items.

Another concern is that initially you start with combined results of the levels of anxiety for all participants as though there is just one year level of students and then later you state that there are three year levels of students which makes a large difference to the levels of anxiety which you stated later.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I can see many changes have been made to the previous revision but there are still some important editing changes that need to be made. Many are grammatical errors related to the use of academic English. For example, the word ‘math’s’ needs to be replaced by mathematics throughout the document.

You have been inconsistent in referring to the group in your study. Consider using pre-service primary teachers consistently through this paper.

Heading should read:  Mathematical anxiety among Primary Education degree students in the post-pandemic era: a case study.

Abstract

·       Line 7: "Part of the affective domain is the anxiety". This would be better written: One of the components of the affective domain is anxiety OR Anxiety is one component of the affective domain.

·       Line 8: the primary teacher in training should be primary teachers in training or say that primary pre-service teachers are trained

·       Line 19: mathematic should be mathematics.

Introduction

·       Line 31: I’m not sure what you mean by “delimitation of basic descriptors”? Do you mean delineation?

·       Line 32: What do you mean by “the articulation between theory and practice”? Do you mean the connection between theory and practice?

·       Line 42: I think you mean vice versa not vice verse.

·       Line 43: What do you mean by ‘they are shown with high level”?

·       Lines 66 – 68: This sentence does not make sense: “Many studies have focused on the study of mathematical anxiety [7-12] as older and more recent works those of Sarah Buckley or Richard Daker and collaborators”. I think there is something missing. You haven’t cited these two references correctly.

·       Lines 79, 114: You need to use ‘mathematics’ not math’s in academic writing.

·       Line 90: This sentence needs to be changed from:’ All these authors have in common that they relate mathematical anxiety’… to: All these authors relate mathematical anxiety …

·       Lines 91 – 92:  Maybe change this sentence: “These emotions occur in different situations according to each of the authors mentioned …” to : According to these authors these emotions occur in different situations …

·       Line 94: What do you mean by “Actual works [19] differentiate”? Are you referring to researchers or teachers or …?

·       Line 98: Who are ‘These authors”? You need to cite the research you are referring to.

·       Line 115: Missing word in phrase: classroom o during. I think you meant or.

·       Line 128: should be analysed not analyse.

·       Line 129: Remove “who show differences” as you state the differences in the sentence.

·       Line 138: What do you mean by: “in all ambits of life”? Do you mean sections?

·       Line 166: I think you mean senior secondary students not “high secondary students”.

·       Line 194: This phrase is not needed: “or face a situation”.

·       Lines 206 - 207 You have been inconsistent in referring to the group in your study. In this sentence you have referred to them as: ‘student trainee primary-school teachers’. Consider using pre-service primary teachers consistently through this paper.

·       Line 215: Change “Which is the relation of anxiety and performance?” to something like: What is the relationship between anxiety and performance?

Method

·       Line 220: Change the phrase “is most identified” to mostly identified or usually identified.

·       Line 223: I think you mean know the history (not legacy)

·       Line 234: Please explain what you mean by: “for a concrete college as a real case”. Do you mean examples for classes the pre-service teachers are going to teach?

·       Line 250: Remove the phrase “To explain that”. Just start the sentence with “For example, …

·       Line 253: Great to see the previous example but please include an example of where the coding was changed.

Results

·       Line 322: What is MD?

·       Table 2: Should be Men not Man.

Discussion and conclusions

·       Line 503: ‘the branches of knowledge’ is not a term in common use. Are you referring to the subjects undertaken in secondary school? Maybe something like: Looking at the secondary subjects studied by these students.

·       Line 506: Replace ‘branch’ with subject.

·       Line 534: mathematical not math

·       Line 545: replace university students with preservice primary teachers

·       Line 548: I think you mean average anxiety

·       Line 550: This does not make sense (them as say … ) It would be better to write “… them as stated by …)

There are still some important editing changes that need to be made. There are some are grammatical errors related to the use of academic English. For example, the word ‘math’s’ needs to be replaced by mathematics throughout the document. Math needs to be replaced by mathematics or mathematical. There are examples where I think the incorrect word has been chosen but I have commented on these in previous document.

You have been inconsistent in referring to the group in your study. Consider using pre-service primary teachers consistently through this paper.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf