Project: From Classroom-Level to Child-Level: Relations Among Elementary School Students’ Math Achievement and Anxiety

Classroom factors can contribute to children’s learning above and beyond children’s prior abilities. For instance, research shows that classroom peers’ math achievement at the start of the academic year positively relates to elementary students’ math achievement at the end of the year. However, children with high math anxiety might not learn as much in such classrooms. Moreover, theoretical work suggests that classroom peers’ math anxiety could relate to children’s math achievement and this relation could vary between children. To address these gaps, we examined how classroom-level math achievement and anxiety related to gains in children’s math achievement, and whether children’s fall math achievement and anxiety moderated these relations. Participants included 3,018 elementary students (i.e., kindergarten; 1st, 2nd, 3rd grades) from 242 classrooms and teachers. We ran multilevel regression models where children were nested in classrooms. Results indicated that classroom-level fall math achievement positively related to children’s spring math achievement. This relation was moderated by children’s fall math achievement but not math anxiety, such that children with initially high math achievement learned more math in high achieving classrooms. Classroom-level fall math anxiety was negatively related to children’s spring math achievement. This relation was moderated by children’s fall math achievement but not math anxiety, such that children with initially high math achievement learned less math in high math anxiety classrooms. Given the mechanism implied by these associations (e.g., peer interactions), these findings could have implications for designing classroom learning activities that promote interactions between peers that lead to math learning.