Depression from and Fear of Covid-19 as predictors of Pre-service Teachers’ Mathematics Anxiety

Mathematics anxiety is a permeative elementinfluencing both the pre-service teachers and educators, importantly affectinginstructional outcomes, particularly achievement in mathematics. The eruption of the COVID-19 epidemic has created a huge alteration and commotion in education, possibly aggravating mathematics anxiety among pre-service teachers. This present study investigateddepression and fear of COVID-19as predictors ofmathematics anxiety among 200 Nigerian pre-service teachers at the University of Lagos, through a predictive correlational research design in the 2020/2021 academic session. Three valid and reliable research instruments were used for data collection and they included: the Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV19-S, α=0.85), Depression from COVID-19 (DEP, α=0.89), and the Abbreviated Mathematics Anxiety Scale (AMAS, α=0.93). Analyses of data were achieved through the mean, standard deviation, Pearson product-moment correlation, and multiple regression analysis. The outcomes of the study showed the significant roles of depression from COVID-19 and fear of COVID-19 in forecasting pre-service teachers’ mathematics anxiety. These psychological constructs are intertwined, explaining significantly the mathematics anxiety enacted by pre-service teachers, specifically within the milieu of the COVID-19 pandemic.