ABSTRACT
The importance of affective factors in education generally, and in the learning of mathematics in particular, is reasserted periodically. In the 1970s and 1980s, the need to enhance females’ participation and performance in mathematics generated interest in affect and attitudes towards mathematics, and especially mathematics anxiety (for example, Fennema and Sherman 1976, Tobias 1978). So, too, did the aim of increasing access to higher education, and/or ‘second chances’ with mathematics, for students and adults generally. More recently, the need to account for blocks in mathematical problem-solving episodes has seemed to require a more cognitive, more qualitative approach (e.g McLeod 1992).
