Abstract

Credit in Mathematics is compulsory for admission into almost all courses in Nigeria Post-Secondary institutions. Yet many students exhibit covert and overt phobia for Mathematics culminating in mass failure at public examinations, and anxiety for the pupils, and sometimes the parents. The study investigated Self-management technique and Systematic Desensitization therapy as interventions management of Mathematics anxiety among Senior Secondary School Students in Ogun State, Nigeria. The pretest-posttest, control group quasi-experimental design with a 3x3x2 factorial matrix was adopted. Three Senior Secondary Schools were randomly selected using multi-stage sampling technique. One Hundred and seventy-three (173) Senior Secondary Class Two (SS 2) students (male and female) with high mathematics anxiety were selected through the simple random sampling technique and assigned to Self-management technique (57) and Systematic Desensitization therapy (58) and control (58) groups. Findings revealed, that there is significant main effects of treatment (self-management technique, systematic desensitization and control) (F(2,154) = 84.419; p < .05) on Mathematics anxiety; no significant main effect of self-efficacy on Mathematics anxiety (F(2,154) = 2.266; p > .05); there is significant main effect of gender on Mathematics anxiety (F(2,154) = 6.210; p < .05); there is significant two-way interaction effect of treatment and self-efficacy on Mathematics anxiety (F(4,154) = 4.134; p < .05); there is no significant two-way interaction effect of treatment and gender on participants’ Mathematics anxiety (F (2,154) = 2.285; p>.05); there is no significant two-way interaction effect of self-efficacy and gender on participants’ Mathematics anxiety (F(2,154)= 2.486; p>.05); there is no significant three-way interaction effects of treatment, self-efficacy and gender (F(4,154) = 1.001; p>.05) on participants’ Mathematics anxiety. It was concluded that Self-management technique and Systematic Desensitization are potent and efficacious in the reduction of Mathematics anxiety. It was recommended that School counsellors and classroom teachers should adopt Self-management techniques and Systematic Desensitization therapy to ameliorate the problems of Mathematics anxiety.