Academic Procrastination as Predictor of Mathematics Anxiety of Pupils in Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated academic procrastination as a predictor of mathematics anxiety of Primary four pupils in Nsukka Local Government Education Authority, Enugu State, Nigeria. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. The design is correlational survey research design. 103 public primary schools with a population of 12840 primary four pupils in the area were used for the study. A stratified sampling and simple random sampling techniques were used to draw 346 primary four pupils which were used for the study. A Questionnaire with two clusters was the instrument used for this study- academic procrastination inventory (API) and Mathematics Anxiety scale (MAS). The instrument was validated by three experts in the faculty of Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Cronbach alpha reliability was used to determine the internal consistency of the instruments which yielded 0.87 and 0.91 respectively. Research questions were analyzed using Pearson r and R-square while the hypotheses were tested using analysis of variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 probability level. It was found that academic procrastination significantly predicts mathematics anxiety and that gender has no significant predictive power on pupils’ mathematics anxiety. It was recommended among others that lessons must be presented in a variety of ways to help pupils perceive mathematics as a pleasurable activity, to make the joy of mathematics to remain permanently with them and to ensure the development of a sustainable educational system. Moreover, teachers, parents, psychologists and counselors should help to inculcate and strengthen confidence, competence, effective use of time, good organization and the likes to avoid procrastination among these pupils.
Keywords: academic; procrastination; anxiety and mathematics;