● Teachers' math anxiety is associated with higher anxiety and lower achievement among their fourth-grade students.
● Girls report more math anxiety than boys, despite no differences in actual performance.
● The evidence suggests that strengthening teachers' confidence in teaching math is key to improving learning outcomes.
Picture a primary school classroom. A teacher writes a fraction problem on the board. Something invisible is already at play: the emotional relationship that the teacher has with mathematics. Do they feel confident teaching it? Or would they rather be teaching anything else?
Research from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), available in Spanish, reveals how fear of math is contagious. It also shows what needs to be part of the conversation when it comes to improving math learning outcomes in Latin American and Caribbean countries: teachers' math anxiety can predict their students' math anxiety.
This March 14, International Day of Mathematics, whose 2026 theme is "Mathematics and Hope," it is worth asking: if anxiety is transmitted, can confidence be transmitted too?
What Is Math Anxiety?
Math anxiety is a feeling of tension and apprehension that interferes with numerical calculation, number manipulation, or mathematical problem-solving in both everyday and academic settings. It is not simply a matter of "not liking" math – it is an emotional response that takes up working memory resources and directly impacts performance.
And it is no minor issue. Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that across the 64 countries assessed, students in nations with higher math anxiety tend to have lower achievement. Latin American and Caribbean countries rank among those with the highest math anxiety and lowest overall performance internationally, suggesting that this emotional factor could be systematically underestimated, hindering learning across the region.
Understanding the Link Between Teachers, Students, and Math
The IDB study, published in the journal Mind, Brain, and Education, analyzed data from nearly 7,500 students and 421 teachers across 226 public schools in Belize. What makes this research unique is that it matched each teacher with their own students, enabling an analysis of whether teachers' attitudes were related to those of their students.
The results revealed that teachers' math anxiety operates as a predictor of their students' math anxiety. And in fourth grade, teacher anxiety was also associated with lower student math achievement.
What drives teacher anxiety? It is not a lack of mathematical knowledge. The most anxious teachers showed lower confidence in teaching math and lower pedagogical knowledge – that is, the ability to understand how their students think, recognize common conceptual errors, and find different ways to explain a concept. However, their scores on math content tests were not significantly related to their anxiety.
The distinction is key: the problem is not that teachers do not know math, but how they feel about teaching it.
Girls Bear the Brunt
The data from Belize replicate a pattern observed globally: girls report higher math anxiety than boys, even though there are no significant differences in their actual performance. This means girls perform just as well as their peers but feel worse about their math performance.
Over the long term, this emotional gap has concrete consequences. Self-efficacy – the belief that one's actions can lead to desired outcomes, and that one has the ability to succeed in a given area of knowledge – proved to be a stronger predictor of academic performance than anxiety itself.
And the study reveals a challenging temporal pattern: in fourth grade, students' self-efficacy is not related to their anxiety, while in seventh grade, the relationship is strong. This suggests that early anxiety becomes progressively embedded in students' math identity, shifting from "I get nervous about math" to "I'm not good at math."
When girls internalize that narrative, they move away from educational and professional pathways that involve mathematical skills, perpetuating gender gaps in STEM fields.
What Can We Do? Lessons for Improving Math Outcomes
If math anxiety is transmitted, it can also be interrupted. The study's evidence points to three lines of action for education systems across the region:
- Train teachers on the emotional dimension of math instruction. Improving content mastery alone is not enough. In Belize, 80% of teachers completed math methods courses, yet this did not prevent the anxiety levels observed. Pre-service and professional development programs should deliberately focus on building confidence in teaching math.
- Intervene early, before anxiety crystallizes. The data suggest a window of opportunity between ages eight and 12, during which anxiety shifts from being an emotional response to becoming part of a student's self-efficacy. Detecting and addressing anxiety before that transition can prevent a negative math identity from taking hold.
- Put girls at the center of the strategy. The Belize study shows that girls do not need interventions because they are less capable, but because their environment transmits disproportionate anxiety that does not reflect their actual abilities.
From Anxiety to Confidence
Math is not learned only with a pencil and paper. It is also learned through the emotions, beliefs, and experiences that shape how teachers and students face numbers.
In a region marked by low learning outcomes – where 75% of students perform poorly in math according to PISA 2022 – and high levels of math anxiety, understanding this emotional dimension is key to improving results.
The Belize study leaves us with the certainty that math anxiety is not just an individual problem but also has a social dimension transmitted in the classroom, from teacher to student. And also the possibility that, if we understand the mechanism, we can intervene.
Math anxiety is contagious, but so is confidence. Every teacher who teaches math with assurance and enthusiasm is breaking a cycle and opening a door.