Stay away from math? Data literacy and math anxiety in seventh-grade students

Abstract: The term data literacy has been defined as “the ability to collect, manage, evaluate, and apply data, in a critical manner” and the concept speaks for an important skill in today’s information-rich digital landscape. The educational system is a key factor in supporting students in their quest of strengthening this ability. The following thesis aims to investigate how student performance related to data literacy, and more specifically proportional reasoning, may be affected by mathematical- and less-mathematical visual framing. In this context, framing can be interpreted as providing different kinds of scaffolding. The reasoning behind using less-mathematical framing is to possibly alleviate some of the emotional resistance that students can experience towards mathematics, a phenomenon known as math anxiety (MA). Related to this, Swedish students’ attitudes and feelings towards mathematics are also investigated. A study using seventh-grade students (N = 114) is described which found no significant difference between the two variations of framing on eight questions targeting proportionality. However, students with the less-mathematical framing did generally perform better, although marginally. In addition, the results found that around 10% of students report frequent feelings of fear and nervousness when thinking about mathematics. Moreover, students tend to use words with negative connotations (such as boring, difficult, and tiresome) when asked to describe mathematics using their own words. With the prevalence of MA and perceived negativity surrounding mathematics, future pedagogical interventions targeting data literacy might indeed benefit from being separated from traditional mathematical characteristics.