The Effect of Instruction Supported by Internet Memes on Students’ Mathematics Anxiety and Mathematics Motivation

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the effect of instruction supported by mathematical internet memes on 8th-grade students’ mathematics anxiety and motivation. The research consisted of a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design conducted for two weeks. The research sample consists of 8th-grade students who study in a state school in Turkey. Data were gathered by using mathematics anxiety and motivation scales before and after the instruction supported by internet memes. As a result of the Mann-Whitney U-test analysis conducted between groups, it is seen that instruction supported by internet memes significantly raised students’ mathematics motivation level in favor of the experiment group. In the analysis conducted by using the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test, it is revealed that there is a statistically significant difference in raising mathematics motivation levels and lowering mathematics anxiety levels in terms of scores obtained from mathematics anxiety and motivation scales for the experimental group, while there is no significant difference on the control group. As a result of the Spearman rank correlation analysis, it was revealed that there was a negative and moderately significant relationship between the scores obtained from both scales. It is recommended to use mathematical internet memes as supportive elements in mathematics teaching.