What effect has this investigation had on me personally?

The million dollar question. When I began this investigation, I identified that I hoped the process was going to be somewhat cathartic. And, to some degree it has. Being forced to confront the psychological and emotional component of mathematics theory certainly engenders critical reflections of ones own deep seated beliefs.

 I realise that we as parents had a part to play in my son's development of maths anxiety through overly high expectations. However, it was a combination of factors that made him susceptible to developing maths anxiety. It is easy for me to accept that maths anxiety has neurodevelopmental origins; emotional self-regulation is an issue my son struggled with when younger (and to a lesser degree he still does). This coupled with low mathematical self-concept and poor performance in the early years  of school meant that it was almost inevitable that he develop maths anxiety. I say almost because it is equally obvious that maths anxiety can be reduced in the classroom by sound practice. In the early years of my son's schooling, there was a heavy reliance on teaching "number sense" to the exclusion of all else, and as a consequence he never developed a solid foundation of basic facts that he could retrieve with any level of automaticity. 

From my journey, it is clear through the research that teachers are the prime determinant in the development of maths anxiety. I believe I am now more readily able to identify the risk factors that contribute to maths anxiety and how they might play out in the classroom. Moreover, as a teacher, I am congnisant of the fact that I have the ability to mitigate the effects of maths anxiety and even reduce the likelihood of it occurring in the first place. The starting point is my attitude, and all else follows from there. Our mathematical programmes must be designed to meet the needs of every individual learner in the classroom. However, this is said with some sense of trepidation, hoping that in a National Standards driven system mathematical programmes do not become constrained by the very mechanism that was supposedly designed to enhance learning. Maths anxiety prevalence could conceivably increase from the estimated 25% of students it now sits at. Bearing this in mind, it is even more important that teachers are aware of the debilitating affect of maths anxiety, and equally, teachers must be strong advocates for a more just and fair anxiety free maths curriculum.

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