Emotion and achievement in the classroom

Anxiety-Meta-analyses. Concerning the magnitude of emotion/achievement relations, there exist three seminal meta-analyses in which academic anxiety is exclusively evaluated. In his meta-analysis of 562 North American studies (1952-1986), Hembree (1988) explored the correlates, causes, effects, and remediation of test anxiety. The studies consisted of samples from upper elementary school to high school and included various achievement measures includ-ing test scores, course grades, and GPA. Results showed test anxiety to have typically moderate negative relations with achievement, for example, with grades in mathematics (r = –.22), natural sciences (r = -–.21), and social sciences (r = –.25). In Seipp (1991), a similar meta-analysis of 126 European and North American studies (1975-1988) revealed generally moderate negative relations between anxiety and academic performance, as indicated in a population effect size of –.21 (range = –.36 to –.07). The third domain-speci c meta-analysis by Ma (1999) explored anxiety and achievement relations concerning mathematics across 26 studies of elementary and secondary students, nding once again a modest population correlation of –.27 (range = –.60 to –.12). Taken together, meta-analyses ndings consistently demonstrate signi cant, albeit moderate, negative relations typically ranging from –.20 to –.25 between anxiety and achievement outcomes.