The relationship between test anxiety and pre-service teachers’ performance in quantitative research methods

Journal of Education and Learning (EduLearn) Vol. 18, No. 1, February 2024, pp. 46~54 ISSN: 2089-9823 DOI: 10.11591/edulearn.v18i1.20995  46 The relationship between test anxiety and pre-service teachers’ performance in quantitative research methods Paul Kwame Butakor, Oscar Mingah Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: The mere mention of mathematics and its related courses such as quantitative research methods drive down shivers and create anxiety among most students. However, this phenomenon has not will been addressed among preservice teachers. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between preservice teachers test anxiety and performance in quantitative research methods in education. And to achieve this purpose, a random sample of 313 preservice teachers from a teacher education University in Ghana were administered the test anxiety inventory (TAI) and the data analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed a significant inverse relationship between test anxiety and preservice teachers’ performance. Similarly, factors such as the examiner, the exam format, previous failures, examination time, presence of invigilator, and lack of adequate preparations were identified as determinants of test anxiety. In terms of coping strategies, it was revealed that respondents adopted cognitive, and educational strategies to mitigate the effect of test anxiety. Received Jun 1, 2023 Revised Oct 11, 2023 Accepted Oct 23, 2023 Keywords: Academic performance Ghana Pre-service teachers Quantitative research methods Test anxiety This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Paul Kwame Butakor Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, University of Ghana Legon Boundary, Accra, Ghana Email: 1. INTRODUCTION One of the essential functions of education in the past and present is the responsibility to impart knowledge, instil good values and enhance the skills and performance of individuals. Education for many people is considered as a special purpose vehicle for actualising aspirational goals to prepare individuals to handle societal issues [1]–[3]. From childhood education all the way to pre-tertiary levels, students are exposed to various activities and tasks in schools aimed at developing their cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains [4]. Although tertiary education performs similar roles, one of the major aims of receiving tertiary education is to offer specialized programs and courses to produce students with the required knowledge and competencies for personal and national development [5]–[9]. Some of these programmes are not only qualitative in nature but are also quantitative or mathematically inclined. According to Campbell and Taylor [10], mathematics related courses are noted to cause stirs in the minds of students. It often leads to significant concerns for students and affects students learning capabilities and performance. For most universities in Ghana and abroad, research methods are one of the compulsory courses that University students would have to study. Such courses, which are usually designed to provide students with statistical insight into the world of research to address social, cultural, educational, and economic issues are often a major force students contend with because of the level of statistics involved in the study. Students’ Journal homepage: http://edulearn.intelektual.org J Edu & Learn ISSN: 2089-9823  47 performance in this area has generally been unsatisfactory and declining [11]. This development raises issues of what could be the possible factors and sources for the decline in performance [12]. Although many factors have been linked to students’ poor performance in the University, the role of psychological variables such as anxiety in assessment situations appears to have received little attention [13]– [18]. It is critical to assess students’ performance during and after the instructional period to ascertain whether a given content has been mastered as well as to evaluate the teaching and learning process. Thus, both formative and summative assessments are mostly used to perform such functions. Because assessments are used to make decisions about students learning and future educational and career advancement the decision-making functions of assessment generate fear and misconceptions among students [19]. In this direction, Pitt et al. [20] observed that the discrepancies between decisions about students’ performance and actual scores obtained bring about some anxiety among students. Further, according to Von der Embse et al. [21] assessments make students develop test anxiety due to the seriousness or consequences with interpretations and assessment decisions. It is against this background that students’ anxiety towards quantitative methods or statistics related courses is increasingly high among college students [11], [12], [22], [23]. This is because, the effect of test anxiety through the interplay of cognitive evaluation, physiological arousal, behavioural, and physical components usually operate to decrease the quality of students’ potentials to perform academically [11], [24]. Generically, test anxiety is a sensation of worry, nervousness or uneasiness, and fear that occur when a student takes assessment or test in whatever form [25]. Test anxiety is widely viewed among researchers in the literature as a bi-dimensional construct with physiological, emotional, and cognitive components which operate in most cases to have a negative effect and causes failure among students [24]. This form of anxiousness might emerge abruptly or gradually. It can be chronic at times, but it can also be over in a few hours before, during, and after the test [24], [26], [27]. Emotionality is manifested physiologically during tests (e.g., raised galvanic skin conductance, increased heart rate, dizziness, sweaty palms, and nausea) as well as through panic-like feelings [28], [29]. Accordingly, Zeidner [30] postulates that worry and pessimistic thinking, self-criticism, or anxiety about the negative effects of failure that emerge during testing situations, form the cognitive component of test anxiety, while also causing students to ‘freeze up' mentally and unable to remember the required information needed to pass a test. Amini and Reamen [31] argued that worry, which is an element of test anxiety, is more consistently connected with decline in academic test scores. Test anxiety is a diverse and dynamic concept that covers numerous human feelings as well as physiological and behavioral reactions [32]. Test Anxiety according to Balogun et al. [33], is a widespread phenomenon that is a universal cause of low academic accomplishment in students all over the world. This means that test anxiety can be explained as the worry of failing an exam, which students m (...truncated)