MATHEMATICAL ANXIETY MITIGATION THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-REGULATED LEARNING SKILLS

Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) refers to how people manage their personal learning processes, specifically how to monitor, regulate, and evaluate their learning and plan learning actions and behavioral processes that increase the likelihood of goal achievement (Zimmerman, 2008).Mathematics Anxiety (MA) refers to the experience of fear and nervousness when participating in mathematical tasks.MA is a barrier to mathematical learning and is considered to hinder student engagement and the effectiveness of their metacognitive processes.Some scholars claimed that very few comprehensive studies link MA and metacognition or SRL in the secondary school context (Efklides, 2011;Morsanyi et al., 2019).Parveen and others (Parveen et al., 2023) suggested future research to explore the relationship between motivation, MA, mathematical learning, and mathematics perseverance.The aim of this study is to explore the impact of adopting an intervention program of the SRL skills on mathematical anxiety among high secondary school students.Sixty-eight 12 th graders who learned mathematics at low learning level, aged (M=17.34,SD=0.43), and studied according to an intervention program that was developed for the purpose of this study and based on practicing SRL skills while solving mathematical problems crossing the SRL stages following (Zimmerman, 2008), the learner: a) makes plans before starting to learn; b) monitors and regulates his cognition, motivation and behavior during the learning process; c) reflects on his learning process afterwards.Two (pre and post) mathematical achievement questionnaires (Matriculation exams preparation), Hopko (2003) MA questionnaire (was distributed pre and post intervention), and a questionnaire that examines the relationship between SRL and mathematical achievement was distributed post intervention.The findings indicated that the average of the students' achievements before the intervention program (M=50.16,SD=24.25), is significantly lower than the average of their achievements after the intervention (M=65.47,SD=20.41),t=-9.047,p<0.01.In addition, it was found that the students' MA before intervention (M=29.87,SD=9.44) was significantly higher than students' MA after the intervention (M=18.22,SD=6.13), t=23.75, p<0.01.Moreover, there is a significant weak positive correlation between SRL and mathematics achievements, rp=0.309,p<0.05.This study offers both theoretical and practical contributions.Theoretically, the findings elucidate the role of SRL in mathematical cognition and performance.Practically, the study informs pedagogical strategies by underscoring the importance of fostering SRL in mathematics education and to reduce the level of MA and to increase their academic achievements.