Treating Mathematics Anxiety: The Optional Contract.

They might learn more if they were not worried about passing uch like a novice golfer on the first tee, the mathe matics student can seriously hamper her or his performance by nervousness and insecurity toward mathematics. At the college level, this anxiety is most often seen in mathematics courses required for nontechnical majors. At my college, this uneasi ness is particularly evident in Selected Topics in Mathematics, most commonly used to satisfy a graduation requirement, and Elementary Statistics, which is required for a number of majors. Approximately half my students enrolled in these courses are freshmen. The upperclassmen have delayed taking them because of anxiety toward, or dislike of, mathematics; many are on a second or subsequent attempt to pass the course. The nervousness of the students becomes a pow erful detriment to their performance, both on a day-to-day basis and during examinations. Students not only have difficulty learning, they also have difficulty expressing on examinations what they have learned. I have tried many of the common techniques to overcome their concerns: student-centered classes, choice of topics covered, humor, extra-credit projects, assurances, full use of calculators, and so on. Yet I continued to be frus trated by the high percent of students who failed or did very poorly despite seeming to have the ability to do much better. In fact, many were excellent students in all other facets of college life, which led me to agree with Morris (1981) that mathematics anxiety "often afflicts persons who are highly suc cessful in other areas/' I thought that if the students were not so wor ried about passing the course, they would learn more. But of course evaluation and grading are necessary to maintain the standards of the college. Hence I decided to try an optional contract. It stu dents were willing to satisfy certain nonevaluative requirements, they would be assured of a passing grade. My rationale was that if they came to class receptive and ready to learn, then the burden was on me to enable them to learn some mathematics. If they did not learn the basic concepts of the topics in the course, then I, not they, had failed. An optional contract is shown on the following page. I shall summarize it by noting that the stu dents were required to attend class regularly (no more than two absences) and bring their textbook, a calculator, and a notebook to each class meeting. They had to take all examinations and correct any errors on them. These corrections had to be 100 percent accurate and handed in on the next class day. Assistance from me or their fellow students was both permitted and encouraged on the correc tions. Fulfilling these obligations guaranteed them at least a D in the course. If they also achieved a course average over 70 percent, I rewarded them with an additional two percentage points. Their letter grade for the course was then computed from this higher percent. A few of my colleagues were concerned that I would pass students who had not learned any of the course material?a reasonable concern that I shall address shortly. In the four sections of the course in which I first