THE EFFECT OF PROBLEM SOLVING APPROACH ON EXAM ANXIETY, SELF-EFFICACY AND MATHEMATICS PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF PREPARATORY SCHOOL IN ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

This study sought to determine the effect of the problem-solving approach and processes to reduce student`s exam anxiety and improve self-efficacy on the academic performance in Mathematics in twelve’s grade of preparatory school for students in bole sub city. The secondary school students studying mathematics constituted the population of this study. The students of 12th class of Government High School Bole were selected as a sample for the study. Sample size consisted of 48 students who were equally divided into an experimental group and a control group on the basis of pre-test. For data collection, Exam Anxiety Scale for student meter for data collection was used. Treatment of the planned problem-solving approach is the guideline of Sharan (2006) and Polya’s (1945) heuristic steps of the problem solving approach. After the treatment, post-test was used to see the effects of the treatment. A two-tailed t-test was used to analyze the data, which revealed that both the experimental and control groups were almost equal in mathematics base at the beginning of the experiment. The experimental group outscored the control group significantly on the post-test. Data analysis was performed by using analysis of covariance showed that the greatest impact happened in reducing math exam anxiety and least effective happened in decreasing anxiety